A Clash of Cymbals
by I-need-asprin
Summary: When the black hole takes Tony somewhere other than dead space, things start going just a little wrong With not one Loki but three, he's really going have trouble figuring out which side to vote for A civil war and a little bit of a man hunt ensues but, hey, as long as he's got whiskey and a not-so-insane 'bad guy' in tow, what could happen? Eventual Loki/Tony
1. A frosty Fiesta

**_-Authors Note-_**

_For this story I am going to be using a mix of the marvel universe (both comic and movie) with a sprig of the original mythology just because I'm using different dimensions and I wanted to experiment a little :) _

_Of course I don't own any of it, and I don't make a profit from this. I just sit in front of a computer, dribbling pathetically. If that made me rich I wouldn't be complaining._

**_-End-_**

The army was relentless. Whenever he cleared his left his right would become infested. If he looked ahead there'd be an attack from his rear, but if he didn't his barriers would break. He would call weapons from his magic, perhaps a dagger or a throwing knife, but he ultimately preferred his hands. It was all to do with what was more convenient. Left, right, a little higher. He's practically dancing with the beasts.

A deadly Fiesta in the middle of Jotunheim.

"Don't let them touch you!" Becomes the chant. More and more come but Loki isn't slowing. He pulses with his energy, roasting the life out of the bloody, vile creatures he's slicing his way through. Another head flew from his ethereal blade and rolled down the icy slopes of this uneven plane. Loki liked that sound. It was oddly pleasing, seated somewhere in the near vicinity of calming. He allows the song to distract him, yet only for a second. It doesn't matter, a second was enough for a single red-eyed monster to slip by his defenses. It grabs him by the leather-wrapped wrist, but not long enough to burn him before he himself grabs it by the throat and rips. It's all very unfair, for before he can see the beast die, a sound hits him like a clash of cymbals. He pushes his kill away as they both fall into a cloud of white. Molten masses start slicing into his skin, ripping him open - disregarding his armor as if it was merely a paper shroud. Shards of red-hot somethings and ice-cold nothings pound into him - Shredding, tearing and burning every inch. It's so bright, a blinding luminescence.  
He has too.  
He projects a shield; uses reserves to heal himself. He hides from other beasts under a shroud of mist. No one notices the debris flying out of nowhere. The onslaught continues. With no senses he cannot call out, only burn through his magic at and obscene rate. It's not long before he feels the sting of trying to use magic he's quickly running out of. As his skin started to cool and his healing aura dissipated, the attack stopped. That was not of Jotun doing - not within their power. The shocked air around him settled again as he called back his wards and clones and whipped his mist back into him. As he found time to turn towards the direction of the fallen star, the residual light was faltering, but was swiftly replaced by a shock wave of heat - a dry, painful distortion of the air. His feet lost their grip on the melting ice beneath him, tossing him to his knees. As his head whipped up from trying to steady himself, he found a blue, crackling fire, fitting of its surroundings. A mangled mess of black and brown metal spires had implanted themselves into these foreign snows. He looked closer, breathing heavy, feeling his nerves start to pull him back, but he would not relent. Black and burnt pieces of red and gold buried beneath a crater of watery, broken ice a few meters from the metal structure. A stray, yet different shard flew past his head, one of metal, ripping up yet more ice, forcing his attention back to the Jotuns as a jealous child would. He swung his body round, taking his fist into the Frost giant's knee caps, throwing him unceremoniously to the ground. The beast slid, thankfully towards a still floor bound Loki, who jammed the hilt of his newly apparated sword into the back of its neck. Then he's being grappled from behind, an icy hand, ripping into his shoulder. It didn't have time to do much damage however as it was cut clean from its owner within seconds, along with its stunned face. He arose from his fall, stepping out of the treacherous pool which had already started to re-freeze. He looked down to his shoulder, a whole layer of leather eaten through by frost, the under layer frayed and iced, steaming with cold.

They had noticed the construction now but too busy with giants that they had passed it off and assumed it native.

Then it was quiet.

He looked ahead into the heat of battle, they were still valiantly fighting. He could hear their racket but something was missing. Something-

Instincts told him to swing back, so he did and caught a weakly propelled fist in his hand.

* * *

Dark. Tight and a little too hot. hot hot hot- h-

The coppery smell of burnt out machinery. Cold - hot -c- cold cold hoco-

Something cracking, flooding. Freezing - cold a-and fre ez-ing- br- breathi n-g.

shock - jolting pain - breathing.

light?

MOving, testing, willing. Come on it's co-ld, s-o co-l d.

Up, and down?

The glove is working. Working - Jarvis? Nothing.

Sit - oh wait- fuck no. No - breathing?

No No No NO N- Up and down, and grip and pull-

Bright light - a white light so painful and cruel and new and unwanted and - ow. Cold.

Sit? Sit. Sat. OW? Cold? cold.

Right. Stand? Don't be funny - too cold to be fu-

What's that? Come on- work...

No. Yes? shit.

no- yes yes yes Stand,

Stood? Ow.

Yes.

Standing, almost, and shaking from side to side, suit leaking all types of man-made chemicals into the slush below, he couldn't, didn't want to believe what he was seeing. Seeing this man he had hoped defeated. He stumbled, not sure why he'd tried to walk. His numbed, metal feet dug below the water level, finding some grip, but welcoming more arctic sludge into his already arctic boots, which he would've felt more, were he not half in shock. He was cramped in his shell, every limb wrapped a little too tight. Every movement pinched him, every twist and turn, no matter how small shot pain everywhere, but he didn't have time for that. Didn't have time for any of this. He tried to straighten, but as he did so, his suit sparked, killing the last ruminants of the hydraulic systems. A weight fell on him, but one good thing he'd found about fear was that it pumped a lot of fresh and clean adrenaline into the body. Even if you're drenched and burnt and semi-unconscious. So close now. Apparently he'd kept walking. Then he reminded himself to stop, but of course it was too late. Before he could tell himself to tell his hand to stop, he was swinging a rather pathetically pathetic punch Loki's Way. And of course he caught it - of course he bloody fucking caught it you stupid, stupid hand.

_/I didn't ask for you/._

Loki, who was previously looking curiously at his catch, now looked to the crater behind as Tony braced for a fight- he was running out of fuel, running out of everything, except maybe pain, yep, he had plenty of that and he had a curious feeling he was about to get a lot, lot more. Loki's gripped tightened on his balled fist as Loki looked back to the conglomeration of blue and grey dots that kept moving rather quickly. Then Tony thinks he fainted because he was suddenly staring up at an unnaturally blue sky, and the pain in his head was back with vengeance. Speaking of things that avenged, _or were meant to,_ where were those bloody Avengers?

He could use them right about now. Like now. As in Loki's just came into his vision with his /_bloody green everything and his- oh thank god he's gone. Oh no, there he is again. No. No, don't do that, no. Come on tony, move -/_

But Tony couldn't move, he couldn't do anything as Loki lowered himself next to him and studied his failing if not completely dead suit. He could swear Loki was talking to him. Lips were moving, warm breath hitting the side of his frostbitten face, the whole works. The problem was that Tony couldn't hear him. His head hurt and he wanted to sleep. Sleep sounded good. Sounded amazing right about now. Yeah.

Let's do that.

* * *

Loki hissed at the man, wincing as he pushed his power beyond his limit to keep his projections up.

"Are you with them?!" The man looked at him like he wasn't there, like he was just another mound of snow and sullied ice. And then something shot through him, that painful snap back of energy in his synapses. He had no more magic to give - his projections fizzled and fell into the nothingness from which they came. He didn't need this, not now. Then his attentions turned elsewhere:

"LOKI!" Thor's scream cut into him. He watched as It was released. Jotun's prized beast. Apparently it was quite big, and a lot faster than it looked. "RUN!"

"What about-" He tried one last time, ignoring the hammering in his chest - his brain consciously un-scrambling as the man's eyes rolled in his head and encased themselves in unconsciousness. With trembling fingers, he hoisted the 'man' up, his weight surprising him. He ran and stumbled. Sif screamed at him, asking what he was doing in a way that suited running for your life. Loki dug around in his body searching for any residue of power, yet as he expected he had none. Fandral had been hurt and was trailing, even behind Loki and his load. It was lucky that the all-father showed up when he did, or else they'd all be dead. Loki was starting to ache. He threatened off Laufey with words he was having trouble hearing. He blinked away his blurring vision. He clamped his feet further into the hard ice to stop the quivering of his legs. His weight was growing with every second.

Then that bright light and pulse of energy brought him back to reality.

They landed rather harshly back in Asgard. A new rush of something flowed into his veins. He had a little strength. Enough to stay conscious with anyhow. Every one of his sinews bathed gluttonously in that glistening Asgardian air. Odin dismissed Heimdall with that cool rage that signified so much more inside him. He could feel his feet again, a good sign he supposed. He could now trust himself enough not to collapse, so he rejoined the conversation.

He ignored Hogun's and Volstagg's silent inquiries as the All-Father said nothing and just stared. He seemed to stare and everything but at an empty spot at the same time. His disappointment had no limits, it seemed. He would've care more, but he still hadn't the power. Of course he could _feel_ the all-fathers rage, it roasted through the air. It ricocheted off the walls and resounded through his ears. He doubted he was the only one feeling his anger though, as he glanced at the way Thor's and Odin's eyes suddenly connected. His mischievous side chuckled loudly in his ears, until he realized he still had the metal man slung over his shoulder. With a few quick sums and quickly played scenarios, he tried to sneak his way out of the room, using that way he had trained up so well.

"Wait" He froze, biting his cheek trying to avoid smirking at a time like this. He turned back, Odin's hand outstretched towards him. "The rest of you leave. We will have words later." The three instructed to go brushed past him, all trying to hide their looks towards his unusual cargo. Sif and Volstagg had one arm around Fandral's shoulders, Fandral had had better days. He couldn't help it, it slipped.

"You would laugh at a time like this?!" Sif hadn't quite shut the door so her shudder was evident. Loki straightened his face, bending one knee to slide the still sleeping man to the floor, his shoulder thanked him for the effort. He stayed crouched on the floor as he replied.

"I was not laughing, father." Odin went to snap again, but stopped. He took in an almighty breath as he gazed upon what Loki had brought back with him, as if he had not noticed it before.

"Why did you bring that thing - where did you find it?"

"I found him in the frozen lands, father. He is no Frost Giant, he would not have been spared." Loki looked at Thor, who was growing impatient. He could taste Thor's troubled mind.

"And you brought him back." It wasn't a question, more an accusation. One Loki didn't appreciate.

"Should I have left him to die?" Loki bowed his head at Odin's fury. His cry hit him like hot oil, then, with a little effort, slid right off. He had more important things to worry about. As he gazed at the suited male, he realized just what had made him take the man with him. He was curious. Fascinated. He could feel a new obsession worming its way out from inside him. He had mixed feelings about that idea at present.

"Father." Loki laughed inside at Thor's stupidity. All Odin's rage turned cruelly on his brother.

"And you!" Thor flinched. "You would lead a war on Jotun again, against my orders?!"

"They started this war father, it is stupid to let them come to us!" Loki was sure they shared various other arguments, but he tuned off, until:

"You are a Cruel boy!"

"And you are an old man and a fool!" Loki was impressed, taking his mind off his new prize to almost admire Thor's effort. Shame it wouldn't do much good, for anyone. He must have fallen back into the land of dizziness and weakness for he had missed yet another whole chunk of their conversation. What happened when he came to, Loki certainly wasn't expecting and certainly made him stay alert. As Loki and Odin stood in the room, alone with the aroma of a freshly banished Thor, for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure what to say.

"Loki-" Odin turned to him, eyes a little redder than before. "Leave, and take your souvenir - I do not want to see him, or you, until dinner. If he requires assistance, give it to him, but if he causes any trouble..." Odin left the ending blank, and walked out of the room, placing a hand on Loki's head as he passed.

He wasn't sure what he was feeling. His brother, sent away. Banished by their fathers hand. The warm streaks fleeing down his face gave some indication, but not one he was fond of.

No. A problem for another time, even if it was cutting into him like glass. He could mope later.

Loki smirked freely and proudly as he transferred himself and his 'souvenir' to an empty bedroom via newly re-acquired magical means.


	2. Panic! In the bedroom

Loki relished the soft mattress beneath him, even if it was not his. He could feel his magic charging, that satisfying tingling at the tips of his fingers, that soothing fire marching like brave men through his veins. It was as peaceful as Loki could ever seem to manage. Being back in his homeland itself helped to speed up this process as he drew from the might of Asgard itself. The very foundations of this land were built on magic and might.

He was also valiantly continuing his efforts in pretending not to worry about his brother, _which of course he did not, _whilst toying with the idea of waking the grubby, soiled man who sat slumped in the chair over in the the corner; he was starting to smell a little interesting. It would be easy. Perhaps cold water, a few ants, a mild electric shock, or perhaps something not so mundane. Multiple, cruel and terrible ideas came to mind, but he dismissed them as quickly as they came. Now was neither the time or the place. He had no intentions of following in Thor's footsteps, wherever they may be. Studying the mechanized man, he pondered on his choice of clothing. He wondered where he was from. If a man falls through the sky of a foreign planet, it tends to leave some mystery to be solved, and Loki was always one for a good unknown. Was this common attire on his world? Was it far? If so, how did he get there. This was all so stimulating, all these questions in the form of a beaten and bruised man. It was all so distracting.

His thoughts were however interrupted when there came a knock at his door. He didn't feel like moving, so he didn't answer, but Sif entered anyway, as expected of her.

"I thought I'd find you in here." Her smile was great, if expertly feigned; he smiled back, her company welcomed. It did however strike him as alarming that she should know his hiding places. Time for a reshuffle, he thought. Her looks turned to _Him_. Loki's eyes following, smile fading for a moment. The warrior goddess was obviously suffering as Loki did, even though he _did not suffer. _Her eyes were red, she had been crying. Such a rare event to witness. She was strong of mind and will and body, but also strong of heart. It hurt him sometimes. To not only feel his own guilt, but that of others too. She had tried to cover her sadness by starting to witter on about something rather trivial and unimportant, even to herself. He saw everything, she should know that by now. He could feel her sadness like a physical manifestation. It came with hints of guilt and pain and every other negative around. Whatever kind of gift this was, and however useful in some situations, at times like this it irritated him.

"How _is_ Fandral?" He stuck to simple questions. He wanted simple conversation. Sif was his friend and so understood it was not rudeness that made him interrupt her rant on Volstagg's open and honest, yet ultimately harmless tongue. She was quite pleased.

"Oh, he is recovering. It looks much worse than it is. He'll be up and as annoying as ever in a few hours. You know how he is with wounds." She laughed falsely, offering him the wine she had probably come here to give him, and that he admittedly hadn't noticed in her hands. "Speaking of injuries, He isn't looking so well, nor yourself. Perhaps you should take him to see the healer and grab a bed while you're there."

"The healer came a few minutes ago, said to give him rest and wanted to have a closer look. I dismissed him. He is not majorly ill, or nothing I can't handle. And if he is after all a threat when he wakes, it is best he wakes in isolation - As for myself, magic is a wonderful asset. I am not as careless as our young friend Fen." Sif laughed at the jest. Taking a gratuitous mouthful of her own wine. How she managed to mix such graceful femininity with a warriors spirit he had yet to uncover. The only reason that pesky healer knew about him was undoubtedly due to someones, most probably Fendral's, gossiping. Or Volstagg and his loud, oddly humorous voice. Perhaps he will lift the mood at some point.

"Well, anyhow, dinner is at sunset. Are you permitted to join?" She lent against the bed post, staring at the intricate golden patterns incorporated with the burnt umbra walls. He had to admit, with this low lighting and the shine from the evening sun, it was quite intoxicating. The painted walls _and_ his shield-lady.

"Yes," He answered sweetly "and my guest, if he has awoken. Although if he hasn't, I am reluctant to leave him." She looked back at him with an eyebrow raised.

"If you did think him a threat, why did you bring him, my dearest sorcerer?" Loki chose to simply dig his head further into the down filled pillow and look at her slyly. A response everyone around him was used to, when he didn't want to tell the truth, but was reluctant to lie. She laughed at him, flicking his booted foot, being the only thing she could reach. "Well I'm sure you have some completely innocent reason, my love." The endearment was meant playfully. "But if you will not talk about him, can we at least talk about Thor?" He knew that was coming, although he thought she'd worm it in, not simply come out with it. She was simply boiling over with surprises.

"He did not deserve the all-fathers punishment." A semi-true statement. It was after all himself who had implanted the trip into the naive Thor's rash and bold brain in the first place, not that he'd tell _anyone _that little secret. He had also spoiled his big day. He did feel somewhat guilty about that, although it made for great entertainment.

"But Loki, we all miss him," A females need to state the obvious sometimes annoyed Loki. "should we not appeal to Odin for his return?" He considered the idea for the 50th time, wondering how they were going to go about this, without of course ensuing Odin's wrath on themselves. He shook his head, propping himself up on his elbows. He looked at her softly, trying to explain without implying anything negative.

"He'll be back, when father is calmer, and Thor is wiser. Asking the Father of All for anymore might make the wait longer." He did not believe his own words. Something commonplace with regards to Loki's tongue. Letting a little more of his emotion shine through and after sipping his wine, he continued. "I too miss him, he is my brother by blood as he is yours through bond. But I'm afraid if we do anything it may make matters worse. If you came to ask me to-"

"No, no" Sif assured him, hurriedly, "just a subject hard to avoid." He knew of her feelings for his brother; they were so clear in his eyes yet Thor being Thor was completely oblivious. Poor girl. She deserved better than the fool. He was a brash god and prone to idiocy, and perhaps not a worthy king, if not certainly. But let no one say that he is an unkind man, nor an untrustworthy man. Just not a good king. He seemed to be the only one to think that.

"Of course." She left quickly without saying another word, but implying millions. She was still uneasy. Loki did not try to stop her.

Although unexpected, suddenly the silence wasn't so pleasing for him. It kept running through his mind. That laughter. Part of him was so so happy Thor had been banished. For a while he no longer had a shadow. He might feel the sun on his skin for once. Though he did miss his brother. For although he had only been gone a mere half a day or so, it was hard _not _to hear Thor's laughter, his jokes and most irritatingly, his boasts. But it was an unaccustomed silence. On second thought, this could be good. Perhaps Thor did need a lesson. Perhaps this was the right thing after all. Perhaps the all-father was not as old and impulsive as he had originally thought.

He glanced out the open window, the lightly rustling curtains encasing the golden orange sky. Sunset could be no more than a few hours away; he was feeling a little peckish.

* * *

When the crimson sun was just a mere slither over the horizon, Loki changed into his dinner robes, expertly crafting and shifting into his new attire. A green tunic with black trousers should do for tonight. A little more solemn than usual. He expected the others would be more upset than himself. They may get suspicious. Only focused on his empty stomach, he had almost forgotten his friend. Feeling it was time, he strode over to him and struck him upon the cheek. That ought to wake him. Niceties are a bonus, but not always strictly needed. He stirred, _excellent._ As the man's eyes opened, he seemed a little... upset. Loki was greeted with an iron plated palm in the stomach. Not that it hurt, it was just unexpected. He picked up the man with renewed strength, slamming him into the wall. He ignored the shower of dust that settled on his red and golden shoulders. The man opened his mouth, a harsh tone spilling out.

"Goddamit, you Son of a Bitch." Were his words.

Loki snorted humorously at the mans voice, the metal cold beneath his fingers. His eyes gazed a little to the left, just over the mans shoulders. There goes the perfect golden pattern, he mused, swearing to blame another.

"Are you physically well?" He went straight to the questions, wanting to get this over with. The quicker he knew the basics, the quicker he could get into detail.

"What?!" Loki looked into the man's eyes, suspiciously. Perhaps something simpler then. Language was obviously not the issue.

"You are of Migard?"

"Wait - did some one hit you over the head... really hard...?" He liked the man's tone. Hint of potential wit. His kind of man. However, seemingly misinterpreting the questions.

"You 'tried'. Any particular reason why?"

"Just a few. Shame I missed." The man smirked at him, eyebrow raising. "Round two?" This man was hostile. Lets see if he could work that out of him.

"You seem to be avoiding my queries. I wouldn't suggest you continue." It's sad when Loki has to use verbal threats to get his means. "I am only trying to be hospitable." The man raised the other eyebrow at him, snorting. "Well, at least a little."

"Well, I would answer your questions if you weren't a mass-murdering psychopath who has me pinned to the wall and god damn well knows the answer to them." He pondered for a moment, "Actually, scratch that. I still wouldn't."

"Harsh words. As false as they are interesting." Loki lessened his grip, but only slightly.

"False, my ass." This was tiring, his stomach protested against the delay.

"What is your name?"

"You're telling me you don't know who I am?"

"Should I?" Tony made a sound like a laugh but more like a choke.

"I thought you said we had something special - tell me it wasn't just one night." There he goes again with that sarcasm.

"Well, say I'm playing a little game, why don't you play along." The man inspected his own armor, no doubt accepting and contemplating his situation. This could actually be a lot more intriguing than he first realized, if he played his cards right that is. What a catch.

"Go on then, you twisted little man." He would hardly consider himself little.

"Who are you?" Loki tried a low whisper, try and intimidate the man. "Your name, please."

"Wait a second - Am I in your bedroom? Or did I redecorate while drunk again?" It obviously wasn't working; he tried a little harder.

"Answer the question." He jammed his palms into the metal again, denting the shoulders inwards. The man yelped.

"Wow, okay-" He was getting his attention, the man was afraid. If only just a little.

"Name." Loki hissed, reveling at his preys submission.

"Tony - Stark." Still his subject sounded confused. Loki continued regardless.

"Species." Tony hesitated, bewildered and scared, trying to think of something funny in his no doubt primitive mind.

"Human." Midgard, he knew it. Ah, humans. So fickle and thin. His almost favorites. Oh so very breakable, but oh so very manipulable. "Hey - I'm a little lost. Literally and figuratively." The less he knows for now the better.

"Why were you in Jotunheim?"

"Is that where I am? Isn't it meant to be cold?" Using humor as a cover, although clever and usually effective is really rather a bad move when dealing with himself on an empty stomach and a rapidly souring mood.

"You are in Asgard."

* * *

"Oh." Tony felt his stomach drop, intestines pooling at his feet. Something was new, something off and rotting at the back of the fridge. Probably the can of beans he had leftover from that party last month.

"And you tried to hit me - is that because I am some mass-murdering psychopath? Are you in league with the frost Giants?"

"Am _I-"_ Tony was confused, terribly confused, and just a little bit absolutely terrified. "Listen, partner- I'll answer all your questions, but perhaps, with less armor on." Amnesia-Loki seemed okay with this, even withdrawing his fists and stepping back a few paces. Wait, why the hell did he say that? He can't take his armor off in front of him - Well he doesn't really seem like a threat, or is this all a game? Besides, it hurts like a bitch queen from hell. The shoulders digging him, the chaffing where the protective guards underneath each separate plate had either been burnt, ripped or frozen off. He hesitated for a moment, weighing up the situation. The only problem is that his scales are cheap and broken and always seem to side with the 'what the hell option' rather than the usually more logical approach. And besides, what good would it do him? The hydraulics knackered and Jarvis out for lunch, it was just as useful as tinfoil. Glorified tinfoil. So he tried to manually peel his suit from him, which is never and easy task no matter what the situation. He ignored Loki's chuckles, still utterly... something about this whole scenario. It wasn't until one of Loki's hands appeared and ripped the chest piece from him, the rest of the suit falling to the ground, that something dawned on him.

"We beat you." Loki froze in front of him, hand mid-ripping a remaining forearm piece.

"Excuse me?" Loki looked up.

"We had you - I..." What exactly had happened. "The chitarui were... I... Did I do it? Did I stop the chitarui?" Tony started to feel a little hot. "In New York.. They-" He tried to stop that niggling feeling that was burning its way up his throat, intensifying as it went, but something was... Was he shaking?

"Tony Stark, the chitaruri are on the other side of this system, what do you have to do with them?"

"Where's..." Tony could feel sweat run down his forehead... something hitting him over the head repeatedly, his heart squeezing in his chest. This wasn't fun. What was failing this time? Was it the heart - but it's still an almost healthy blue... Every inhale felt like and exhale, every blink an earthquake. The brain? A seizure? No... No, he-

"What is wrong?" Such a simple statement. But Tony didn't understand... flashes of everything started hitting him- flashes of red and white mixed with jolts of memories and scenes. It terrified him, much more than the man standing in front of him- Loki.

"What have you done to me?!" Bells tolled through Tony's ears as his knees buckled beneath him. He pushed away the hands, he had to breathe...

* * *

The man was panicking beneath his fingers, were they meant to do this? Did he scare the man too much - he didn't seem the type to lose nerve easily, and certainly not like this. It was with great pain that Loki ignored the dinner bells that beckoned him. His plaything was malfunctioning. Loki offered some comfort, a mental block given via physical contact. The memories he contacted momentarily in return causing him to wince. It would take a while to take effect . He stood back up, any further help obviously unwanted. After a few minutes the man seemed to relax. Loki shut the window, the night air growing colder. After a few more minutes, his eyes still closed, his knees at his chest, this Stark started to breathe normally.

* * *

Tony knew he had to get away from him. This is Loki, god knows what he's doing or planning. He kept his eyes closed, thinking, steaming through ideas and ways to escape. All, unfortunately required a functional suit, knowledge of where he was and most importantly a clear head, none of which he actually had at present.

He just wanted to kill this SOB and get the hell back home.

So while Loki was standing at the window, admiring some view he had probably programmed himself, Tony ran for the door, exiting as Loki sighed in unison with Loki's stomach.


	3. But dad, why must ET go home?

As Loki finally left a few minutes after Houdini had ran off, he contemplated his situation, didn't like it much, so promptly made up another.

This little goose chase could possibly take away the protestations of his stomach, but he highly doubted it. He did have half a mind to just ignore the problem, go down and neck a few kegs of wine and a few chickens, but he couldn't. Somewhere in this palace was a man, half deranged, running and possibly hiding 'for his life' with no real reason. He probably just wants to get home to that 'other place'. To be honest, Loki knew where he had come from. Not exactly, but he had a pretty good idea. This Stark clearly had some quarrel with him, and as he hadn't met the man before it wasn't a case of his own past misdeeds, of which Loki had plenty. It must mean there is another him. Perhaps in another time, another dimension maybe. Somewhere where he was even more of the villain than now and that is where Tony had come from. He liked the sound of this place.

As it turns out one of the maids had been sent to get him, just in case he had not heard the calling bells. As if he could miss them. He politely dismissed him as they met a little down the hallway, giving him only the order of telling the others the reason of his unfortunate absence.

"Now, if you would excuse me, I have a human to catch before Odin skins me." Fists tightening by his sides, he continued his paced walk around the corridors. Luckily he was alone and could be sure that Stark wasn't getting into any major trouble. This was thanks to an Asgardian's love for food and utter distaste at the very idea of missing it. Oh, he was missing it_._ He looked with his mind to where Odin might be and saw him not at dinner but in his own room. Too utterly something to eat. Guilt didn't suit the man, anger didn't suit the expression on his face and if tiredness was the problem, that was nothing new and would not distract him from his dear love of meads and meats. He took a sharp left followed by an equally sharp right. Feeling the Midgards presence painfully close, he sent out a projection of himself, in an attempt to herd Stark towards him. It worked wonderfully. Tony appeared in front of him, bemused and tired, gripping his leg as if it were hurting him. Loki stood straight, slamming his foot to the floor in a halt.

"I do not like the consequences of you being found running around the castle halls unsupervised." He laughed. "You need only have asked if it was a tour you desired."

* * *

Tony hated his life at this moment in time. "Where the hell is the exit to this place?" He would've made a display of annoyance but dear god did his thigh ache.

Everything ached.

Loki chivalrously answered. "Back the way you came, a little down the south corridor, through the great hall and out of the southern door. Or of course there is the window." He evidently hadn't thought of that.

"Why do things always occur to me way too late." His shoulder really was packing a punch.

"Now. I missed dinner to deal with you, if you want to go home, I would suggest you not run off again."

"Why can't I go home now?" Tony thought that was a fair question.

"I would like to know why you were in Jotunheim. Why you know as much about Asgard as you do." His smile widened as Tony grew uncomfortable. "Of course, we should find another location." He held out his hand, palm to the ceiling. "Come."

"I'm not holding your hand, honey."

"If you wish to walk another mile of corridors to get to the great hall, be my guest. I was going to simply teleport us there."

"I'll walk." Stark was a very brave man, he was in great pain and testing a god's patience.

"Why so distrusting?" Stark politely motioned for Loki to walk ahead of him, Loki did the same, being no fool.

"Well, Pepper's always saying I need to walk more." Tony started walking, if somewhat reluctantly.

"You have conversation with a condiment?"

"Sure - why not." It was rhetorical. He sounded a little sarcastic, but Loki let it pass. Tony passed him, Loki tailed him. Stark didn't seem too happy when he put a hand between his shoulder blades. "Why the touching?" Within a second they were standing in the king's chambers, within another Tony was pushed to his knees in front of Odin who sat proudly in his reading chair. Instead of a book in his old and greying hands there lay nothing but a golden pendant. The king's golden pendant. "You sly bastard." That insult was aimed at himself, fortunately for him.

"Father," Loki, with some effort, ignored the insult, dampening the fire brewing in his belly. "this is Tony Stark of Migard."

"The one you found in Jotunheim and took in?" Odin commented dryly. He was evidently still not pleased with his decision. Loki nodded, looking down to Tony. If he wanted him to stay longer and stay in a way in which Loki could make public, he must convince the all-father to hold investigations, or at least hold him.

"Look, patchy-" Loki struck him round the head, not as hard as he could've, but still strong enough to make the man's head hurt a while after. Odin had no objections to this move. "Can't I just go home?" He continued after a considerable hitch of breath. Odin was not terribly impressed.

"Be lucky you are unaccustomed to Asgardian ways. Insulting a king is a grave offense. But anyway, before we return you, which we shall, why were you in Jotun lands?" Loki's mind whirled with ideas, he had to implement one of them pretty quickly.

"Would anyone believe me if I said I don't know?"

"No, they wouldn't."

"Well, I just kinda flew into this black hole thing, some ship exploded. Next thing I know I'm in Jotun-whatever" Patience was one of Loki's lesser-known virtues. It was however, wearing thin. This man was hard work.

"It would have been a lot easier for you to have just told me that earlier." Loki's voice was a low hiss in Tony's ear, although Loki was still standing tall behind him.

"So you are an innocent, who has been prey to fortunate, if unfortunate, circumstance. You are lucky Loki was there, he pulled you out." He huffed. "Then I pulled him out."

"Thanks then, I suppose" Stark's words were directed to Odin. "No offense, but I always imagined you a little older... You know, with the whole Dumbledore beard and a Gandalf hat? No?" Loki resisted hitting him again. Not only was it a form of stress relief, it was oddly satisfying.

"Father-" Odin looked distracted. "He already knew of Asgard and it's people. Namely the Chitauri."

"He knew of the Chitauri?"

"And of Thor..." Odin stood, his stewards beside him positioning their swords. Loki either had him, or had lost him.

"Send him home - he does not belong here." Odin strode towards them, then surpassed them, an air or annoyance in his movements. "You should be wiser of your pets, Loki." Loki did not turn, but heard the great doors behind slam. Frigga, his dear and patient Frigga watched him softly. She smiled at him and the cargo that had not seen her and he smiled back with no meaning behind it. He hoisted Stark to his feet by the shoulder of his cotton shirt. The doors were thrown open before he touched them, crashing with gratuitous harshness into the walls either side of it. The tantrums of a sorcerer were sometimes discrete. Sometimes not. Frigga did not mind.

"You are nauseating." He pushed his pet down the corridors, taking the long route to the rainbow bridge. Odin was unpredictable when in a mood, harder to manipulate than usual.

"Thanks?" New ideas came to mind. He could go with him to this other Earth, study him there. But that would be flawed. There would be another Loki, one Stark was evidently afraid of. He certainty wouldn't take pleasure in clone of himself so he doubted his counterpart would.

"You made me seem a fool." Still his mind raced.

"You do that yourself, buddy." In a breeze of brilliance it came to him. Send him back to this dimensions Earth. Let him realize this and call for help to return to Asgard. Tony will explain the situation to only himself, and he could pretend that there is no way back, or at least that it would take a long time to implement. It was a weak plan, one Stark could easily deduce, but the only one he had as of yet. One he could most easily build on. Loki only knew one thing with certainty at this point. Now that it had been proven difficult to achieve, he wanted Stark to stay even more.

"Listen Loki..." Tony struggled against Loki's grip "I don't think I'm in the right time zone here." Loki didn't give.

"You think the explosion you neglected to tell me about sent you cross space _and_ time?"

"Pretty much, can that be factored in to my little trip down the rainbow?"

"I shall ask Heimdall."

"Oh, and how much extra is it for the pot of gold?"

The walk across the rainbow bridge was quiet on Loki's side, but with all the sarky comments Stark was making, Loki was finding the idea of throwing him off the side all too tempting.

* * *

For Tony, this was all a little concerning.

This nice but not-so-nice guy act that Loki was playing was all too good. So Tony Stark played along. Make the man think as if he's won. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it damn well. Credit given where credit's due. Authentic atmosphere, even the smell of leather and old guy breath was pretty accurate.

Once they reached the great hemisphere Loki stopped him, spun him round, and almost looked into his eyes. "I shall not be joining you." Yeah, right. "Where do you wish to be planted?" Seen as he couldn't give exact location of where he left off, he gave the second best thing.

"Stark Tower."

"Which is where?"

"Earth, Midtown Manhattan, New York City in the US of A.

"Heimdall." Loki instructed.

"Of course." The gatekeeper nodded in response, readying his post. Tony lazily shook free of Loki's grasp.

"And remember," Loki added quietly, turning Tony back by the shoulder. "If anything is wrong, or you land incorrectly, call me and only me." Loki paused for emphasis. "Understand?" His words had a subtle, sneaky malice in them, malice he didn't truly mean. He had no grudge against the man. Not one he couldn't get over, anyway.

"So what do I do? Just stand here and click my heels together three times?" Tony jiggled like an excited infant. Loki still wasn't convinced that the man was fully sound of mind just yet. He'll find out in due course.

"Just stand still." Loki offered, rubbing the oncoming headache.

"Ready?" Asked the golden keeper.

"Probably?" Tony questioned, pulling down his greasy shirt with unease.

"Bye." Waved Loki playfully, earning a less than polite response from the man he just saved. He was beginning to think he should have just left him there.

As the man disappeared with a quick snippet of a surprised yelp, he smiled to himself. He did not truly wish he had left Stark behind. He liked him.

Then Heimdall turned to him.


	4. Drunk Thor's and revelations

Loki saw Heimdall's gaze on him and turned away. He needed food and a bed. Not the complaints of some unimportant man. "Loki," His call was a command. Perhaps his thoughts were harsh. Heimdall was a respected warrior. "it is not suggested." Loki spun in response, his helmet and over-armor appearing within a golden mist. The feel of metal plates pressing into in padded skin was comforting, secure.

"I know," He smiled with hidden intent, not to threaten, merely to remind. "but what else is there to do around here?" Loki smiled sweetly "Promise not to tell?" Heimdall was a stoic as he ever was. "I am harming no one" He offered, hands clasping behind his back, shoulders pushing up.

"Except Tony Stark" A statement that held little truth.

"No harm will come to him." Loki 'pleaded'. "Please?"

Loki was curious and stubborn, but hardly malicious. Mischievous maybe, but not malevolent. He wanted Heimdall to let it pass. "It is merely a curiosity of mine" If it failed here, it could be ever bad for both Tony and himself. He would not let it fail.

Besides, this _honest_ gatekeeper had not revealed the fact that Tony had not been sent far enough in time to reach his own time. Why so holy and righteous now?

"I shall pick him up in confidence after he calls. Providing he calls you. If he calls to Odin himself, Odin shall know." Damn this gatekeeper and his sworn oaths.

"Oh, and how is my brother - he is down there with Stark, is he not?"

"He is fine. Stark and Thor have not met on this Earth yet." Loki considered this, brewing a new, if slightly more ambitious task than he had before intended.

"Perhaps they should, Hmm?" Heimdall gave him a knowing look, one mixed with warning and disapproval. If Loki was looking for approval, he most certainly wouldn't look here. It was all good and well that he wasn't, wasn't it.

* * *

Whatever it was that just happened, he hoped to never have to do it again in his life. His head was ringing, unnecessarily loudly. Beneath his feet was a burnt and gravelly symbol, something he doubted would be easy to clear. He was crouching in the middle of the circle when he found enough strength to open his eyes. Well, the Earth looked a lot dimmer than the golden walls of Asgard. He was a little bit let down to be honest. He wondered if pepper would let him plate the walls in gold? After all, she liked shiny metals.

He runs his fingers through the gravel, sifting stones and dirt through his fingers. Feeling the needles relent in his toes, he wobbled to his feet. He hoped no one saw this. He hobbled towards the door to his tower, his precious, non-shiny tower.

"Wait one tiny minute," Tony swung round in circles, taking in his surroundings. Not exactly post-almost-apocalyptic decor. Urgh. Not what he asked for. Then a shape appeared by the external doors.

"Pepper!" He cried, forgetting for a moment what this was, and hoping for another that it wasn't.

She emerged out of the tower, a little put off by the new road graffiti, wielding a clipboard and pen. "What on Earth is wrong with you?! And what-" She stopped walking towards him. "What are you wearing!?" She was not suitably pleased to see him and that was not the response he had expected.

"I erm..." He looked down at his attire. No, he could give her that, he didn't exactly look like the front cover of Vogue. Tony walked towards her, hushing her along with him back inside the building.

"Right, and-" She looked back up the stairs she had come down only seconds before. "What the hell?" Pepper looked a little shocked, judging by the size of her eyes and the little yelp of realization that left her lips.

"Wha-" Tony Stark was interrupted, but not by Pepper, with a quite frankly put:

"Who the hell _are_ you talking to? If it's Frank again, you know where to tell him to stick that... Deal..."

There were many things Tony had expected about his voyage home. Being planted in a different time to the one he left, like was apparent now, or even perhaps a different country - even a different planet. He had heard mars was nice last millennium. He had not however prepared himself to hear, well, himself. This could be a little difficult to explain.

A man dressed in a grey shirt with ripped and greasy trouser, descended down the staircase two steps at a time, freezing on the last step, eyes meeting Tony's.

"Hello." Nothing could ever be weirder, or as oddly arousing, as greeting yourself.

"Hey -" Other-him seemed just as subtly confused as... Him? "Is there something you need to tell me Pepper?" At least other-him was actually like him. All sass and asshole-y. If not that would be a little disappointing. All his hopes of getting home now seemed a little dimmer - what _was_ Loki up to?

It hadn't occurred to him, at least not until now that he himself may have changed something. If he had indeed gone back into the past, and Loki was pulling no trick, which was becoming an increasing possibility, does it now mean that he caused some alternate reality? Is this Loki actually an innocent and confused bystander who happened to save another innocent man who almost landed on him in a foreign land?

Did Tony have it wrong? Loki didn't look very hot back in 'his' place. Could he pull a scenario this good out of his pocket when it's been shredded and packed full of dirt and sweat? Why would he go through the effort to send him back to another earth. If he wanted Tony dead, why the foreplay? This all seemed a little unnecessary...

He had to stop, thinking well about Loki Laufeyson hurt his head. Besides, this was Loki. Who knows what he wants anymore. He cant get all 7 billion humans so he'll have to settle with... one. Hell, this did sound a little absurd. Or was that what Loki wanted him to think?

Tony never could understand what goes through Loki's head. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to.

Well, whether Loki's on the wagon or 38 miles behind, as he's here he might as well go get answers he could trust. When was this? Judging by the lack of concern of his counter parts face, not avenger timeline and not as early as pre-prisoner. The glowing box on his chest told him that. He looked around his tower, Pepper's face expectant, his own face's amused reflected in his eyes.

"Hey, whats happening to you guys at the moment?" Tony scanned the room further, picking out the bourbon cabinet with glistening eyes.

"Hammer." Oh brilliant. They were fun times. He had half a mind to 'borrow' some of his own alcohol, but he already had a hell hangover induced by that monster of a transport. He'll stick to the stairs next time. But veering vaguely back onto the topic, he had to figure out what else is happening around this little point.

Snippets of some Agent and large, blaring cut scene of Miss 'Rushmore' came to mind. A little something followed, something he hadn't picked up on at first.

Thor.

Thor was having a disco down on Migard, or whatever those aliens liked to call it, wasn't he? But where? Reels and reels of depressive drinking and new elements hit him like a horrible, twisted version of nostalgia.

_Come on, Tony, think! _

Oh yeah.

New Mexico. Right... _How the hell am I going to get to New Mexico? _Before the other... people had time to ask any more questions that he really didn't have answers to, he went straight for it.

"Can I use your suit, well I mean... Our suit?" Other-Tony laughed. He liked to think that seen as he was him they could share a little.

After a little pleasant conversation and offers of hanging around for a bit (which he had to painfully decline) mark 3 was his to use as he pleased, after he'd also passed all the 'is-it-actually-Tony' tests. Being subjected to extremely personal torture was not something he went through everyday. But one good thing came out of it, he found a new and shiny kink. God he was handsome, a mirror just didn't seem to cut it.

Once suited up and sent on his way with a watch and a shirt packed in the only place it would fit, he had a little time to breathe.

He'd never realized how sweet Jarvis' voice was until a familiar sounding: 'Gmorning, sir' came through his ears.

Utilizing his resources as they presented himself, he checked the situation. Jarvis didn't know.

He asked whether this was real. Jarvis's made some snide remark. He had taught him well. But it was apparently real.

He asked where the nearest Denny's was. Jarvis gave him the sad news. He'd passed all of them. It was a grave moment.

The only problem was that Jarvis kept having to be manually instructed to do stuff, he didn't seem to recognize Tony. Kept saying his alignment was off. Well he'd never programmed that into him so he's not sure where Jarvis got that information from.

Now he of course didn't mind the tightness in the left arm joint, it just meant he couldn't do pull ups without the suit locking up, but the suit seemed to mind immensely. 2 or 3 miles from the intended destination, this beautiful piece of art gave up on its mechanical existence and dismantled itself into 247 different pieces, 12ft off the ground. As if he didn't hurt enough.

Well, there goes Jarvis.

_Oh great, freakin' fantastic._

He just staid lying belly down on the floor, wheezing lightly into the sand, bits and pieces of burnt out circuits scattered clumsily around him. This felt all too familiar. Of course there wouldn't be any cars on the road. No one to pick him up. Well, there was an upside to this, no one saw him crash. When he finally accepted the unfairness of life he got to his knees. Perhaps finding Thor was a little ambitious. He could just call up that golden dude again? What was his name?

He got to his feet, buried a little hole in the sand and buried his useless mark 3, patting the mound in respect. He served well. Marking a little X with his fingers before wiping the sand from his palms with his shirt, Tony looked ahead of him. The horizon was empty. A beige canvas separated only by a thin grey line. He sighed a great sigh.

Finally plucking his shirt from under a shoulder plate and tying it in a belt loop, he ruffled his hair. He smelt like a plant pot. Breathing in via the mouth, he set about down the road, the twinges in his gazillion muscles returning with venomous force.

The road was long and dusty, the day getting hotter and hotter which didn't really help much. Burger-less and suit-less, he wanted nothing more than a cool beer and a hug.

By the time Tony had figured out that finding Thor might be a useful as a chocolate fireguard, it was already Dusk. This day was just getting better and better.

There was never a man as pleased as Tony Stark when he saw civilization. Well, until till he saw a group of 'civilians' making their way out of a bar.

Their shapes were very distinct, well one of them was. Bulky Frame, shit-eating grin, hippie hair...

He jogged a little, straining those poor, poor muscles just a little more. He promised them a nice long bath with a certain condiment of his and a rubber duck as soon as he got out of this little thing he was in. That seemed to spur them on. Once he caught up, out of breath and out of options he stopped in front of the group, arms out stretched.

"Err... Thor?" He asked, dropping his arms once they stood still.

"Ahh, human!" He jeered, patting him rather harshly on his bruised shoulders. He winced, but the great God of Thunder didn't seem to get the hint. So he stood there in vasts amount of pain, regretting his life immensely.

'Thor' looked drunk - joy. He was trailed by three females. Trash that - two females and a male. Damn he was tired. Right, time for the glorious negotiations. He needed their little friend here and they seemed reluctant to give.

* * *

Back in Asgard, once Loki had his plan in motion, it rolled sweetly along at a pleasant pace. He barely had time to reach the feasting hall before he heard his name. It wasn't a call, it was a thought about calling him. Close enough, that would have to do.

Loki set straight to work, weaving his little web. Well, when he said little, it was really quite huge. Cracks in the wall of his own chambers started to form, as if the age old paint were cracking. Peeling off strip by strip, a frozen idea of wind flew out, pulling everything around it in. The hole grew, enveloping the wall from ceiling to floorboard. It was a ditch as black as ebony but as bright as any star. He stepped in.

He felt the dark energy wash over him, dousing him in gasoline as he stood near a flame. Although risky it was fun. He strode through the humid darkness, hand in front searching for the first wall. The hellmouth closed behind him, the sound of a vacuum sucking and the faint but obnoxious cries of things to come and things passed by swirled around him. Although there were no directions, there was a path. An enclosure, fitted to his body. It didn't flex, it didn't bend. It was not solid but not did not run like liquid. It was simply matter. There - that cold and crisp breeze. The signal to turn 'right.' Then it was a simple matter of unlocking the sacred seals and magic wards then he was away. It took no longer than a few minutes before he was standing on concreted ground, unsure of exact locations, but certain it was Earth itself. Normal air was just so dull, and the suns light too bright. The dark paths held a certain charm to Loki. He almost felt at home, though he would never accept anything so soppy to be a truth.

Eventually he would get his hard earned meal, but for now he had to locate the caller of his name.

* * *

"Thor - you can't just walk out before-" A woman who he knew to be Jane Foster looked at Tony as he stepped in front of them, cutting herself off mid-sentence. "Hello," She waved weakly. She looked suspicious. "Sorry about him. Whatever he's said or done please ignore him." She lent close to whisper at him. "_He's off the meds_" Then an air of recognition came to her eyes. "Aren't you..."

"Tony Stark - Iron man? Yeah, but me and the big guy are acquainted, well sort of..." Thor grinned wider. God, his teeth are white.

"I know you?" Drunken Thor was actually quite a delight, but didn't seem like he was going to be of any help in his journey back home. He really had to get some of Thor's history, it was obviously more interesting than previously assumed judging by the lovely Jane at his side.

Weighing up the evidence as four confused and sleep-blurred figures started at him blankly, Tony damn near collapsed.

"Well, it was nice to meet you guys," He shook the hand Jane offered him. Apparently she was a 'fan of his work.' The youngest of the group was a fan of his face, according to herself. "Sorry for your time" Before they could answer, Tony half ran off into a dark alley, collapsing down the wall and onto his ass. Jesus that was cold. All that walking was unnecessary. Salt and about eight lemons squeezed into the gaping wound of his sanity. Would it be undignified to sleep in an alley. On second thought, this little crevice smelled like some Hobo's underwear. Perhaps he'd listen to dignity for once. With a few seconds of labored breathing and glances at the group who were walking down the road, very, very slowly, he came to a piss poor conclusion. Yes, _another one._

He was going to have to call that damned little bastard. What did he do? Did he just have to say the name? Scream it off a roof top? Should he have asked for a number?

"You need only think about me" Tony almost screamed, heart missing a beat or three. Finding his tongue, which he'd regrettably just bitten, he stared up at the darkened figure standing in the alley with him.

"Well that's 50 shades of creepy..." Tony held his chest, muttering some obscene promises under his breaths. Apparently Loki had startled him. "You sure you weren't just following me?" Doubts starting growing in Tony's mind again.

"Not physically."

"Again. Stalking's not attractive." He'd almost recovered from the mini-heart attack. He looked up at Loki's face. Pristine and annoyingly arrogant. So, did he know about the..."Hey, erm are you..." He action-ed out a little 'rawr' sequence. How he often imagined Loki as a frost giant. He believed but had never seen. He got a little nervous when Loki's face continued to grow amused.

"You confuse me, I like it." Loki cleared his throat. "Anyway, you called?" He didn't want to call. Loki's a lunatic, a mad man, a man hellbent on destruction and with out depravity or conscience. Not exactly best pal material. Hell, he wasn't even enemy material. Just chain him to the nearest rocket and send him to Titan. But still, he had to play ball if he wanted out, but that doesn't mean he had to fall for every trick and trauma. Only the good ones.

"Right, in case you _are_ playing some game, I just want you to know I know. If you're not and have no idea what I just said, please take me home, to my actual home then promptly leave seconds after. This is not the second date and I am not asking you back for 'coffee.' Capish?"

"I understand." Loki played his 'this-is-unfortunate' routine. "But if this is not where you are from, it might be difficult to ascertain your true time. If Heimdall cannot place your origins, it must be far away."

Tony nearly cried, watching Thor giggle his way through stage 3 drunkenness and Jane mop up messily while Loki, _the good guy,_ stood before him telling him going home was going to take a while. He saw Loki's gaze turn ashamedly to his adopted bro.

"Ohh... wait a moment" The green eyes snapped back to him.

"What?"

"You and him are..."

"Brothers" He was going along the lines of not trying to kill each other, but that works too.

"...Yeah." He licked his drying lips. "So, you taking him back too?" Does he get to see brotherly lovin' in action?

"No"

"Why not? Poor dude's _really_ suffering" Tony laughed at his own joke. Thor was off his rocker with two dazzling, bright young ladies chained to his hip bones. But by heck, this alley really did stink.

"I cannot" Loki seemed to shrink about eight and a half inches right before his very eyes.

"Or won't?" Tony tested, checking where the available exits were if Loki decided to go full on Bruce Lee on him.

"I would, he just isn't worthy." It was said matter of factly, as if Loki didn't care much.

"Worthy?" Tony checked. Worthy of what? World's soberest god? As far as he remembered, Thor was a great guy. Wasn't he king of that place... Obviously after Odin.

"He is... was banished by our father"

"Ouch - Bad boy Thor, huh?" Now he really had to do a little research into this guys life. Didn't exactly sound how he'd imagined. "Well, don't we just have to make him worthy?" Loki's eyebrow raised at the suggestion, he bent his knees, Tony's eyes following him down.

"And how would we do that?" Tony just had to tell himself that he was helping Thor and not Loki, and then in his head this was all justifiable and awesome. Besides, he'd already screwed up this version of events, why not go the whole hog?

"Well, I did have this one idea..."


	5. Bad plots and dodgy graphics pt1

"What do you mean that won't work?" Coughed Tony, very nearly offended. He had put a lot of thought into that idea.

"Thor is no idiot." Loki was still sat on the floor too, albeit on the other wall opposite Tony, legs crossed beneath him, head back against the uncovered brick work. "If only it were as simply as your voice makes it sound." Tony looked out of the alley and back to the street. Shops and cafes and nightclubs seemed to be popular around here, and most, if not all were in need of a major paint job. That's deserts for you.

"Well, I'd like like to party on home, so can't I go homeward and then you go... Off..?" Loki shrugged his shoulders simply.

"I am afraid if I leave now, I won't be able to return here without suspicion, then perhaps he will never come back." Tony laughed and Loki wondered why.

"I can pretty much assure you that he does." Tony chuckled to himself. What a sticky, garbage flavored mess he was in. Next time he had the opportunity to save the world he was waving it's sweet ass goodbye.

Loki's ears pricked up at his words. "How?"

"Oh you know," Tony did a sort of breathing snort "I'm psychic."

"Oh yes?" Loki grinned, one eyebrow raising in obvious disbelief.

"Yeah." Tony nodded, tapping his temples.

"So what am I thinking?" Loki shuffled, drawing a knee into himself, leaning on his palm which rested casually on the tarmacked ground.

"That I'm not?"

"Oh, you're good." Assured Loki playfully. Tony was feeling a little like a crap-tastic cliche rolled into one enormous ball of exhaustion, rolling down a hill at maximum velocity while trying to tell himself he was sunbathing on the sun kissed shores of Ibiza, preferably while _being_ kissed, but beggars really can't be choosers.

Meanwhile, as Tony was having his bi-monthly breakdown, Loki peeked his head round the corner of the alley entrance. Thor and Co. were just a spot in the distance, although his laughter could still be heard if you listened hard enough.

Tony wanted to get this over with, as much fun as it was. "Can't you just go up to him, tell him where the hammer is, then drag his ass back to Asgard?"

"Again, how will he lift the hammer?"

"Steroids?" Loki just started at him, swallowing down that recurring homicidal impulse. Tony shivered, baring teeth at the god in apology, if that expression is even possible.

Loki steered away from that topic quite expertly. "You are from the future, correct?"

"Yeah..." Tony was unsure of the direction this was taking.

"How did he get back? If you know."

He didn't really want to set his 'daddy-issues' off when he was the designated driver. So to compensate he gave out the directors cut.

"Some dude lied and said his dad died and then he got all melodramatic and nearly got killed." It was clear that even the pg13 version still didn't appease him.

"Who was this 'dude' and where can I find him?"

"Why do we need him? That's not gonna work now, is it?"

"Perhaps not but it is a chance."

"Look, can't we just go back to Odin and appeal?" It looked as if Loki was about to answer, but he seemed to stop himself, finding time in this semi-sewer to smile. Half a mile down the road, coincidentally where Thor had just trod, a gravelly, burning symbol implanted itself on the dirt track, an explosion of light knocking the surrounding humans to the dirt.  
Loki closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he inhaled.

"Stay." With that he was gone. Tony didn't want to look round the corner, some of the noises he was hearing couldn't have been natural. Was that a bone cracking?

Now he really was going crazy. That sounded like...

Tony risked a peek.

He wished he hadn't.

They say the human body can hold 4.2 - 4.8 liters of blood. Well Loki better stop whatever he's doing 'cos he seems to be leaking it pretty fast. Oh and there's that... erm... Great big metal thing?

Holy shit, is that thing breathing fire? Tony whipped his head back.

Youch, whiplash's a bitch.

He heard a few buildings collapse, a few explosions, the shrill cry then the violent silence of a car alarm and then to top it off a few dozen windows smashing in the chorus.

Nothing he wasn't used to in the battle he was currently missing the end of. He hated Cliffhangers, and this was the ultimate one.

Then from that moment on, it was just a kind of monotonous droning of rubbing metal and under-oiled joints. He sat there in not so quiet contemplation, back flash against the wall. His foot kept twitching but besides from that, it was just him, his mind and a giant metal hooligan. In comparison his suit was a toddler. Okay, his was a lot brighter and cooler, but that thing? It was huge.

Now, he wasn't _scared_ as he sat there, just wary and aware of the circumstances. Vividly aware. He didn't usually freeze up in fear, but he wasn't usually this special kind of something. Tired, hungry as hell and more than a little conflicted. Good Loki or bad Loki? Dream or Reality? Home or away? Preferably the first option. And chicken. God, who _wouldn't_ he punch for some chicken nuggets? He might even give Fury a swing, he was _that_ hungry.

Once he heard Thor yell out in fury, he decided he was going to have to risk another look. Without giving himself time for his rather poor excuse for a survival instinct time to kick in, he just went for it. What he saw wasn't terrifically positive, nor was it irrevocably negative. His dearest 'best-bud' Loki was on his knees, back falling to the earth as if in slow motion.

Was that meant to be happening? That bitch was his ride, he couldn't just bail now.

The beast was still there but preoccupied with something just out his line of vision, and if you think Tony Stark was sticking his head any further out of this little spot of safety, you'd be fatally wrong, my friend.

So he turned back, shuffling further back into the shadows. He wasn't going to be doing that again anytime soon, he was sure.

Anyway, what could he do to help without a suit? He'd just have to wait it out and prey to anyone but Odin that he'd be okay. Or at least alive and with all four limbs by the end of it.

* * *

Thor panicked; his brother had fallen, his friends injured and himself out of options.  
A million thoughts carved into his mind like bitter parasites. A thousand words cut his throat, acid bleeding from the wounds.

All because of him, he chanted. The sweet lullabies of a sickened realization. He...

He did this.

A ball of flame flicked at his feet, he missed it by the narrowest of narrow margins. He threw a car as a distraction so the guardian blew it up in response. He hid behind a building, the building fell. He tried it, just as a last resort.

But alas, it still didn't come.

He glanced down for a second, standing in the eye of this turbulent storm. He gazed at his brother, chest still, then tempting his eyes away he looked back at his Earthen companions, each one of them now at safety, but all too late.

He looked back to the iron giant with a face he had never donned before, and he held out his hand.

Still it let him down.

So he dodged more attacks, steering them away from buildings and further into the desert.

And just when Thor was beginning to droop, and to bend like a beggar at the knees, by the nine god's it came. He had little time for emotions.

The beast was quickly defeated; not hastily enough for Thor's appetites, but all the same it fell.

So finally, in the still of after-battle silence he held the hammer in his hands as if it were more precious than diamond. Still, he couldn't help but feel as if some opportunity had been lost. Strange.

Cutting himself from his mind, he ran to his brother, dropping to his knees, grinding to a halt in the sands. Thank everything that his brother was still breathing, laughing in Thor's face as he looked down in shock.

"You worried, brother?" He mocked, Thor resisting the urge to hit him square in the face with his dear Molinjir. He thought the fool was dead.

"Damn sentinels." Thor muttered in fake jest, cupping his brothers sullied face, wiping away the blood from his mouth.

"Well," Loki's ribs cracked further as he coughed. "That was unpleasant."

"You came for me." Thor muttered into his brothers hair, gratefulness spilling from his lips into Loki's ear, then out the other side.

While Thor and Loki lay on the ground, moping to each other, a second Loki, one greatly less injured appeared by Tony's side. He almost jumped out of still shocked skin.

"Your sympathy for my almost death is heart warming, Stark." Loki may have looked alright, but something was telling him that Loki wasn't doing the whole vibrato thing on purpose.

"How the hell did that work?" Tony looked back at the wreckage of the fight. Thor had waddled off from Loki, who had insisted, to sort out his other friends, who were all, to various degrees, bleeding. In all honesty, Loki didn't know how that had worked, but making it seem like he did made him feel better about that.

"A lot can happen in a man's mind when he thinks his family and friends are in danger because of him. Granted he is still an idiot, but one just about worthy to wield a weapon not intended to be apart from him."

"So, A) you had me scheming for nothing," Loki smirked, "and B), you're telling me Odin wasn't trying very hard?"

"Precisely."

"Where'd that thing come from anyway?"

"I may have made a certain stop before I came to find you. If I hadn't I may of had dinner. Be grateful." He held his hand to his stomach, as if that was the real tragedy of today's events.

"I know, man..." Tony looked down to his own empty digestive system. "I know how you feel."

* * *

People now started emerging from their homes, non-screaming, shock stopping their voices from working. Or maybe that was because of Loki's headache, either of the two. Where there was a painful will, there was a magical and slightly devious way. Loki also took it upon himself to hide the advanced warrior from Midgardian curiosity; not enough power to return it to their own realm, but enough to hide it in the middle of the surrounding dessert, some 40-50ft under.

* * *

Back with the broken brothers, Thor had returned to Loki, satisfied with the others conditions. Loki was 'healing' himself with speed, sat in the sand as if he were lounging for pleasure. Although brightened by Loki's ways, Thor had questions.

He stood above him, not oppressively or to threaten, but to seem braver than he felt. "Our father sent this after you?" His voice was calm and controlled. The way a man standing over the edge of a bridge with a gun held to his head is calm.

"No, no." He comforted his brother "No, of course not. He wouldn't. I am not sure who did, but it does not matter. It was defeated, and now, my brother" His shoulders relaxed, eyes wrinkled by his smile. "You can come home."

This all seemed usually suspicious, even when his brother was involved, but home was home and Thor wanted to go.

Before he allowed Loki to do anything, he turned to his friends. They were injured and would be safer without him. Giving himself no time to grieve or regret he turned away, wiping their memories of him ever being there.

He would make sure they were safe.


	6. Bad plots and dodgy graphics pt2

Loki, semi-trying, cleaned up most of the mess caused by the incident. The by-passers and innocents were dealt with swiftly; ambulances and police cars came in, harpies cries trough the air. It was becoming a theme that they should get a lift back home before the real trouble starts, and this time, Heimdall was their savior.

Loki, Thor and Tony landed back in the golden dome of Asgard.

Tony really freakin' hated that freakin' machine. Give him five minutes and a spanner and he'd feel a lot better. Oh, and throw in a sixty course meal while you're at it.

Of course he was thrilled that Thor was home and blah, blah, blah, but he was more troubled with more important issues, such as not passing out.

* * *

As soon as they landed back in Asgardian lands, the new sun bringing a new day, Loki smiled. So far, so almost good.

Feeling safe and sound in his home, Thor took time to relax and embraced his brother.

Loki would never admit to himself that he was overjoyed, but he could admit it to the brother who he held in his arms.

"Brother," he breathed. "You were missed." He pulled him away by the shoulders, holding him at arms length. Thor's own hands rested on his forearms. He looked into Thor's wide and glistening eyes and felt no stir inside. Something uncharacteristically cold, even for him. He would investigate later. After dinner.

Loki depraved himself of so much love, he didn't see it from anyone else. He merely gave it when it was given wholly and all at once, as in this moment.

He called Hogun with his mind, whispering simple instructions. Hogun - the one most likely to run straight to him instead of opening his mouth. God he loved the silent, deadly type. Even if they spoke a lot they said very little.

Without letting Loki down, a few minutes later Said warrior could be seen running down the rainbow bridge at his full speed, the rest of the warriors three and Sif a few seconds behind, not sure what the fuss was about, their shapes unclear.

Hardly even out of breath, Hogun came to a halt, hidden smile bright and eyes beaming. Thor caught eye of him and near exploded. "So," Thor's friend cried "the Prince returns, does he?" Thor laughed.

"Yes he does." Came Thor, hugging his friend as if it had been years, not days since they had last met. And in this moment of relative peace, Loki turned to the keeper of the realms, the eye of these lands and nodded courteously. Heimdall had done him a great favor and so now Loki owed him. It now came upon him to question why he had done such a favor. What did he know that they did not? Again. He shall ask later, act now.

"How on Earth did you manage it?" The others by this point had caught up and were smothering Thor in a mixture of surprised joy, happy hugs and slaps for being stupid.

Before Thor could answer with anything that might hinder Loki's chances, he beat him to it.

"Tony was making some trouble down there. I would appreciate it," He lent in closer, grinning like the trickster he was, the others laughing and fooling along with him, "If you didn't mention specifics to _Him_." They agreed and easy truce. They clapped him too on the back, congratulating him. Thor got the hint that Loki did not want the truth told, and was grateful enough to comply.

"Well, I hate to burst your bubble, my friend but your father wont be pleased." Hogun was always the voice of reason in everything they ever did.

Loki begged to differ; reason was never really his thing. "If he has taken the hammer, he is worthy. Odin will be happy, beyond belief or reason." Now their queries had been answered, they again filled their thoughts with their virtuous Thor.

Loki looked at his brother, giving himself time to smile and laugh before taking Tony, who was just standing like a small man who thinks he owns the world, by the shoulders and walking down the rainbow bridge in the opposite direction, just the two of them, alone. The others still distracted by Thor's return dd not follow. They barely even noticed their departure.

It did not matter. What mattered was that Odin would hear word of this through a rather long and twisted grapevine and he would _not_ be best pleased, no matter what the others or himself had said. Yes he would be joyed in Thor's return but not so much by his means. He had to get himself prepared. So while Loki hushed him away, quiet and unquestioned, Tony took the time to satisfy his own needs.

"So, can you take me back to home, home now?" Loki stayed silent for a moment, quickening his pace.

"As I said before, I shall need some time and a limited amount of assistance in helping track down your particular origins. I'm sure we can accommodate you for a few weeks."

"Weeks?" Tony almost coughed up a lung, stopping the God with a chop of his hand.

"I'm afraid," Loki justified "that no one is faster at locating a single thread in a knitted sheet than me, and it still takes time." Trying to lie about how the long the process would take was a little too risky for such a delicate game as this. It would take a week. Everyone knew that, but if he made it seem difficult as if something was odd, perhaps he could buy more time. It suddenly hit him how pathetic and clingy he was acting. He loved it.

"And no matter how long I'm here for, I can still go back to exactly when I came from?"

"Precisely."

"No tricks or funny business?"

"Oh, absolutely."

"Well then," Loki's pace started again and did not slow until reaching the long and winding corridors of his home, where he merged into the bustling crowds of servants to whom a certain someone's arrival had already been announced. "As long as that's sorted."

* * *

Ahh, there he was. He was wondering when they'd meet. He hadn't thought he'd be this punctual. Although it seemed he had feared for naught; Odin was no where near as wrathful as expected. Odin stopped them at the end of the hallway, finding it somewhere in his power to freeze all of time around them.

So close to the feasting hall yet so devilishly far.

"Loki." He spoke, neglecting to pay any attention to the human in their presence.

"Father." Dropping his hands from Tony's skin, much to said mans delight, Loki stood straighter.

"I want to be pleased with you..." Loki looked at the true god before him and noted all he could see. He was not in good health, no, not at all. Loki said not a word, Tony choking on his restricting vocal chords. "Oh let the boy speak." Reasoned Odin, walking further towards them.

"Thanks," Tony muttered, rubbing his throat, glaring almost evilly at his new found companion. "I was just going to say nice beard." Odin stopped in front of them, eyes only on Loki. He saw why Loki had stopped him speaking - the man was insane with lethargy. With more than one meaning in his words, Odin replied.

"Thank you." The Father of Asgard walked off, the hustle of the servants and assistance continuing, not giving ether Tony or Loki time to process the king's words. The king never said thank you, not to one not of his own blood, and even if they were, it was a rare event. 'I must be special,' reasoned Tony, 'Odin must know something,' reasoned Loki.

But as Odin walked one way to meet his son, Loki and Tony walked the other. The king, distracted almost fell over his own feet who did not carry him with their usual grace and majesty.

"My king?" Asked a humble servant as a caring and cared for subject would. Odin huffed, mustering all his might and glory in one drawn out breath.

"My son is up to something," He muttered out of earshot and out of sight. "Again."

* * *

"So where's a bed?" Asked Tony innocently, his eyes, before blurry now just displaying various dots that could be one thing or another thing. He was going to start needing subtitles.

"I fear you will not have time for rest."

"Excuse me?" Loki half smacked, half caressed Tony's forehead, a little rudely to be honest, he didn't appreciate the invasion. But oddly enough, it was like a shot of caffeine, like he's just downed eight and a half steaming espressos. He liked. "What'd you just do to me?"

"Energy boost. However, be careful. Go to sleep while that's still in your system and you'll be sleeping a while."

"Thanks for the red pills then, Pablo... I suppose." With a simple 'stay here,' Loki went off on his own, leaving Tony to his pretty self. Why leave him in a corridor? Infuriating little man. Slightly awkward and a little lost he sat on the outreaching window ledge, looking out into that golden sun that threatened to scar his retinas if he looked too long. He decided after the sun got boring that people watching was the way to go.

It must have been about three minutes before Tony wandered off. He mostly just followed a few stray chefs that smelled delicious in a completely non-cannabalistic way, or a few maids who he was not objectifying at all. He wouldn't. But on one occasion he decided on following a giant of a man. He should've expected this, but the man, who he recognized from the bridge turned to face him. When he did the smile on his face was so great he thought he might have had had some Joker inspired make-up thing going on. That wouldn't have been the weirdest thing he'd seen.

"Hello!" That wasn't the reaction he usually got when someone found out that he'd been following them, not that he did it often... "Hey, you're Loki's salvage aren't you?"

"Yeah, that's me." He wasn't anyone's anything but he wasn't sure what else he was, so he just went with it for the sake of his dwindling sanity. "Tony." They didn't shake hands, they just kind of nodded at each other in a vague mutual 'Yo.'

"Well then, come with me." As creepy as the statement was he doubted the BFG meant him any harm.

So Tony joined in playing it cool. 'Volstagg', as he was informed, was Thor's greatest and most loyal friend and apparently also a great and fierce warrior in love with the culinary and womanly arts. His type of man.

Tony had made a new friend before they reached the Hall, the one place that he would be if he could not be home. He had fantasized about this moment the whole way here. He expected tables and tables of roasted, mashed a fried delights. He envisaged crispy skins and juicy flesh and all manner of things making him fear devolving into a more primal sub-breed. Tonius Hungrious. But as they turned the corner almost in sync, his heart fell.

As his eyes looked into an empty space, all his hopes and dreams seemed futile. As if noticing Tony's drop of life, Volstagg was quick to comfort him, clapping him on the back as if that would comfort him at all. It didn't.

"Don't worry, my boy. Food'll be 'ere quick." Volstagg joggled his beast of a stomach. "Ah, you've never had our pig, have you?"

"Nope, not yet." Tony was still in mourning, driven to near-hallucinations. Now he was awake the hunger was less, but also because he was now awake he could focus on being hungry. It was all really one great, unfair, torturous cycle intent on killing him slowly and painfully.

"Well lets just say, it's all Odin ever eats. Fit for a king yet good for a man like yourself. It's a true gift from Valhalla." He and Volstagg both drifted off into some sort of dream coma, only aroused when the reason Volstagg had come here in the first place slapped them round their heads.

"I said did you get it?" Both men swiveled on their heels, both stepping back from the man who was unexpectedly close behind them. That man, who Tony also recognized from the famous bridge scene was standing as if ready to start swinging punches. The slight turn up of his lips let him know however that no actual harm was meant... As long as he did exactly what the stern faced warrior wanted.

"Of course, brother!" Volstagg exclaimed. He undid the belt on his great fur coat. From inside he pulled a fresh looking scroll and inspected it quickly. He held it out as if to pass it over before whipping it away before Hogun could get a hold. "Is the other part getting done?" Volstagg checked, as if to question and irritate at the same time. The theatrical grin was still playing throughout.

"Of course, _Brother_. Sif, Odin, Frigga and half of Loki are sorting that part out. It's my job, _and yours_, to take this shell and make it a decent hosting place." The remark seemed to only make the ghost of Christmas present's grin grow. How did he do it? How were his cheeks not burning? He'd been smiling since he'd uncovered Tony, hell, maybe even since Thor's return. Then, settling their lovers quarrel, they both turned to him.

"Do you want to help a few men spread a little magic dust?" All too suddenly, Tony felt like he'd just been asked to prom. But before he could answer, Volstagg jumped at the arm appearing around his neck.

"Sorry, my friends," Interceded Loki, who had physically appeared out of nowhere and seized everyone's attention. "But I have a little job of my own for him." Volstagg stood back in submission, pushing off Loki's playfully invasive limbs with a snort, while Hogun just crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Tony really just wanted to rip Loki's face off. No he didn't want to spread 'a little fairy dust' or whatever, but neither did he want to go gallivanting off with that ticking time-bomb. That wasn't as of yet on his bucket list.

But with a few spiked words, a little hinting here and a touch of persuasion there, Tony followed Loki from the room like a dog does his owner. He waved good bye to Volstagg, who promised to catch up at the 'totally secret' feast held for Thor, but Hogun, as solemn as he appeared to be just smiled at him, dragging the multicolored lump of muscle and mead to work. But as they left, and the great doors shut, barring Tony from any human or otherwise protection, he had to just make one thing clear. Loki did not own him. He was a free man, albeit a lost and confused one with no sense of direction and or sense of what the hell was actually going on. If freedom was the noose, and Loki the man with the axe, he was dying today.


	7. Traditions and Taverns

"I told you to stay." Loki reminded in unassuming tones as they walked a little way down the corridors.

What could he say, he got bored. "And?"

"So," Loki repeated, taking his words slowly "as you obviously have no plans and I have my own little part to play, why not help me out?" Loki really had a knack for choking people slowly.

"Depends." Tony answered, picking curiously at the cut he hadn't noticed on his wrist. "How much effort am I going to have to put in?" His words said 'no, none at all', but his eyes said something different. Tony was all too aware of what kind of set up this might well be, but honestly, in the sea of messes he was in right now, he didn't care.

After a short pause of deliberate deliberation, Loki's voice came again. "Can you ride?" He wasn't serious. Tony had to stop walking.

"A horse?" He couldn't be serious.

Loki took his sweet, precious time to wipe that grin off his face before he answered. "Yes."

Seriously? Damn his rich boy privilege.

"Isn't there any other form of... not horse riding?" How dare Loki laugh at him. Tony didn't laugh at his awful choices of attire. Well, whatever, he was **not** riding a horse, and not with Loki. Didn't he have some history with horses? He didn't want to get in the middle of that little love fest.

"Then I shall go without you. Have fun with the ball robes and table settings, Tony Stark." Of all the times to get an inappropriate urge, now seemed appropriate.

Tony continued walking. "You're a mean man."

"I do try." Something else came into Tony's head, prompted by the gurgling in his stomach.

"Say, I'm sure this feast is going to be great and all but I could eat a horse even now."

"Please don't eat these horses, they are noble."

"It's an expression." They exited the palace and made their way down the million and 34 steps, the sun's light entered Tony's eyes like acid but hugged his skin softly. He put a hand up to stop the harsh noon ray, going blind didn't sound like a fun idea.

"I see." Loki handed him a squidgy something wrapped in what looked like a banana leaf as they walked. Tony looked down at it.

"I don't really like being handed things." He informed the god, rubbing his moist palms together. It was a little hot out here. Loki bent down, putting it on the last marble step, Tony followed and picked it up. Resuming their walk, Tony pulled apart those wrappings suspiciously, his brain disagreeing with his stomach on the matter of eating this.

"Erm... Is it safe to eat?" Tony prodded it. It sprung back a little. "And you sure there isn't a McDonald's or something round here?"

"It won't harm you if you eat it." Tony took a scoop onto his fingers, sniffing it. It didn't smell too bad. He ran his tongue over it, finding much to his surprise and almost delight that it was actually pretty good. Kinda fruity.

Kinda fruity, and kinda deciding not to leave his molars in peace. That stuff was sticky.

"What the hell is this?" Tony asked, trying to peel it off the inside of his mouth where it was clinging for dear life.

"Horse feed."

Loki deserved a fate much worse than death.

Tony put the 'food' into his pocket, sulking.

From then on they walked in silence to the stables, dodging mostly each other but also the cleaners and house setters for fear they drag them in to help put up some tinsel or staple some frilly red ribbon around the edges of everything. Although the party itself was something both of them were greatly looking forward to, some of the pre-party preparations weren't something they were really willing to participate in.

Besides Tony had other plans. He'd already deduced that this was not an illusion and that he had gone somewhere odd via that black hole, and that this Loki was as innocent as he could ever be, well at least of not massacring a city. So he could be trusted, to a very, very limited extent. What other way could he spend his time? The only other reason he was going along was to escape all that glitter that would never come off no matter how much surgical bleach you pour on yourself at half three in the morning. That was a fun one to explain to Pepper.

Oh-

It was only when they reached the stable and Tony saw the sheer grace and size of these Noble Horses that he shook his head from dangerous thoughts, stopped in his tracks and scowled. "You look saddened." Commented Loki, saddling the horses with ease and expertise.

"Oh- No, just... why would you want something living between your legs?" Tony kicked a heel into the dirt, feeling somewhat like a sulking toddler.

"I can think of many reasons." Tony hissed in distaste. That was not something he wanted to imagine Loki doing. Ew.

No.

As he mounted the horse, willingly or otherwise, Tony was still deciding whether or not to ask.

As they kicked off their horses into a trot, Tony did. "So what's our mission, sir?" There had to be some ulterior motive. Loki wouldn't just up and invite the new guy to help him out. He had 180 problems and questions and Loki was involved in most of them.

"There is brew needed for the mead. We have been sent to get it. It's the task I always get." Fair.

"Not a bad one either. But why the whole crypto crap?" As soon as Tony said it he felt like an idiot. Loki, however, did not seem to answer it as if he were.

"Sometimes," He said, pulling at the reigns, moving his horse into an accelerating gallop. Tony did the same. "the truth is just too dull."

So Loki and Tony went to get the mead. The trip wasn't long, but the way Tony was taking in every detail made it seem an eon. Even Loki, owner of jewels un-valued and a treasury so grand even Tony might shed a tear or two, would still look around his dwellings and be proud. Above and all around them were silver spirals and swirling buildings that glinted gold. There were busy men and busier women. There were hairy ones and skinny ones and some a mix of the two. There were other horse riders on the roads that separated all these towers, none of whom rode a horse as grand as Loki's great mare, which was of course a coal black. Tony's stallion was still awesomely impressive, but his own sour face and uncomfortableness kinda ruined the effect.

As the highrises around them became lower and lower and the crowd became fewer, Loki kindly informed Tony that they had exited the city. The ground turned to brown dirt not paved stone and around them the sidewalks turned to overgrown, heat-browned grass. They took a left and came to the more residential areas of Asgard. As they passed the 'common' people on their way to do their 'common' things, most took time to turn and smile and throw an odd word or two at Loki. Usually they were jokes that he'd heard a thousand times but it was nice to know that there was a community thing going on here.

Tony didn't get much more than a few people waving from their windows. Sufficient enough for a new guy, he reasoned.

He had kinda expected that everyone would have lived in great palaces, they weren't exactly poor looking. They dressed the same, minus the armor of the city and wore their hair in the same braids and styles, men and women alike. And as for the new type of buildings, they weren't exactly mud huts and sticks and twigs stuck together with string, but it just wasn't what he had anticipated. They were just a sort of English-Country cottage, all lined up both sides of a dirt track. It wasn't smelly or unclean, and there certainly were flowers. A lot of flowers. Boy, did these people like flowers.

It all would have been perfect if a sign saying 'Welcome to the Shire' was hanging around somewhere.

After working their way down the lane, Loki stopped them at what looked like a pub and dismounted. The blacksmith and his anvil next door were quite loud, aggravating Tony's already blaring headache. He didn't like horse riding.

"They require 4 kegs of Greying Wilderbeast." Instructed Loki to Tony, as if he had asked. _What a name,_ thought Tony, scared to get off the horse. Loki stood below him, only just seeing Tony's position still on the grey Baroque. "Now, are you coming or are you just going to sit there and cry?"

Tony weighed up his present scenario. "I haven't decided yet." In response to Tony's obvious fear, Loki took hold of Tony's horse by the reigns and whispered into it's ear like the weird, obviously delusional man he was. Tony hadn't time to question however before he was bucked off his horse and, with a yelp, landed in a neat little dusty pile a few meters away. The expression on his face was not of over joyed glee. Calming the horse, Loki laughed along with the crowd that had discreetly gathered.

"Now," Came Loki, giving the horses over to a passer-by to look after for a while. "Coming?"

Inside the 'tavern,' a man sitting at the equivalent to a bar raised a glass in their direction, Loki nodded back.

"Same again?" Asked the bartender, suddenly appearing in front of them. Loki smiled.

"Am I becoming too predictable?" Loki responded, handing him the 'wishlist.' The barman took it with his large, plump fingers.

"Oh, you are many things, my prince, but predictable? That's a bit of a stretch." Loki, smiling, pulled out a chair at the bar-thing and motioned for Tony to sit. He did. The two of them - Loki and the barkeep - took off into a doorway behind the bar. The door closed behind them. The man Tony had sat next to offered him his drink, which being the moocher he was, Tony accepted.

When Loki returned, he had one arm curled around a keg and the same hand gripping the top of one and in the other another keg and a small sachet.

Tony stood just in time to have one shoved into his chest.

"What's that one for?" He motioned to the browning sachet.

"Oh, just a little tradition of mine."

* * *

Once they were both back in Asgard, and stood in the half-prepared feasting hall, and the barrels of alcoholic beverages were set down, Loki turned to Tony, eying up his particularly atrocious attire. Tony was surprised Loki hadn't mentioned it earlier.

"Before the festivities begin, would you like something... Different to wear?"

"I'm good." He replied, brushing a little dust off his shoulder. Tony knew that whatever something 'different' meant, it involved bolts and belts and leathers and he really wasn't feeling that specific vibe just now. He had the spare shirt... Somewhere... He patted around the hem of his trousers, pulling it out from where it had been hiding. It wasn't much better than the one he had on. It was covered in butt sweat, dirty and smelling faintly of horse.

But he was not wearing leather.

"Are you sure?" Loki checked, being kind enough to take the shirt off him and make it conveniently disappear.

"Always." Loki might have to change that attitude of thinking, but perhaps after the feast. He wasn't too bad.

As long as he stayed 800ft away from everyone else.

* * *

After a few more hours of reluctant table settings that Tony couldn't avoid but Loki sneakily could, the reason behind this whole mule haul began.

* * *

It was not that Tony believed that Loki was always unloved or socially inept, but he kinda did. He was watching him with his birth but adopted mother, Frigga, who had a hand over his on the table. They had their chairs inclined towards each other, in the midst of some deep conversation that Tony couldn't hear nor read on their lips.

He turned away, the moment seeming all too intimate for his merely mortal eyes.

He took another large gulp of his drink.

He of course was sat at the back, for although Asgardian celebrations were more of an social affair and so was he, he felt a little odd. Plus there were guards with pointy things here and he kinda looked like he'd just gone on a murderous rampage. He didn't wish for that sort of attention. So, he was at his own little table, far away from the main hustle and bustle of tonight's cabaret. Hmm... Magic shows and sparkly lights were hardly _Earthen dancing girls_, but nether the less, they helped the huge mass of tender, honeyed, roasted 'something' go down. It was turning out to be a pretty great night.

Even through his mental blockades he could still hear the chattering of over 300 Asgardians and the mead in their bellies. The laughter was raucous and the conversation topics often odd but it just added a sort of blinding chaotic order to the whole fiasco.

It wasn't until Thor started choking on his drink that for a moment everyone was quiet and Tony truly paid attention to his surroundings.

"My god!" Thor cried, pushing himself up from his chair, face reddened and hand at his chest. "Every time, Loki! Every time!" _So that's what that was for._

Tony went back into his head. He was having fun in his mind. He was imagining home. And bed. Whatever that juice was that Loki gave him, he had the impression that it was starting to wear off.

Until someones hand gripped down hard on his shoulder.

"Why the sour face?" Came a voice he didn't recognize. Before Tony had time to readjust to reality, someone was sitting at the table with him, then another, then another. Three flushed faces sat staring at him as if he held the answers to the universe.

"Long day?" They all laughed at him. Had he told a joke? They kept laughing. Oh my god, _just go away._

Then he came back from Goo-goo land and he did indeed recognize the faces. "How can I help you idiots? Tony asked, leaning onto the circular table, propping his chin up with a fist.

"Why don't you come and join us?" Just a little ominous then.

"Where?"

"On the head table." Came Hogun.

"Lots more wine to drink." Came Fandral.

And lastly came Volstagg's booming tones. "And more to eat."

Tony's limited attention had been caught there. "All the best foods are privy to the king," Continued the gentle giant beside him. "and his most loyal followers of course." So Tony followed them back to the King's table much to the others delight. Worming their way back through mounds and mounds of smelly drunkards was something miles away from fun but neighbors to stimulating. He sat on a chair pulled from another table, the previous occupant uncaring as he had passed out and was now lying on a table, drool leaking from his reddened lips. When he sat, they all seemed to continue the conversation like he wasn't someone who had literally only been here about 24 hours. Not that he minded, though. In fact, he joined in with the chatter and merry-making. They all started comparing stories and tales about past victories. Volstagg tried to go into one of his 'great poems' but luckily for everyone involved, Fandral managed to silence him with another slice of spiced pork.

It wasn't until they were silent for a second and their ears turned to Thor's side of discussion that the night really got interesting.

Nothing could've prepared him for the glee that the look on Thor's face brought him when Loki oh so subtly mentioned the _red hair. _He of course didn't understand the story behind it, he was more enveloped in the gratuitous servings of 'vallhalla-y' foods put before him, but again, Thor's face was priceless. Or very expensive, depending on if someone caught it on camera, if they even have cameras here, which he supposed was possible.

So from then on, the warriors three and Tony Stark joined in conversations with the king, his wife and her one and a half sons. Oh and the sons... Girlfriend?

Well whatever, Tony would pry later, scoff minted lamb now.

More topics were brought up, Loki would dig further into Thor's history for another episode of Embarrassing Bodies and Odin would stare a little more into his cup of mead as if it were a portal to some other place.

But at the end of it all, after the multiple mishaps and tricks brought on by a certain someone and everyone else, he was beginning to like it here.

And you know, Tony was starting to think that this Loki kid was alright. If you take away all the insanity and murder and awful hair, he's really not so bad.

_But that hair?!_

At least the feast ended on a high. Fandral had wandered off with some women, Thor was half snoring into his half eaten roast and even Hogun was starting to giggle at a few of Volstagg's jokes. Sif and Frigga were talking about something or other and Odin himself was gone many hours before.

Tony himself? Oh, he was drunk.

He was more drunk than he'd been in a good few years, but still a little conscious. Back on Earth alcohol was about as affective as soda or mint gum, but the wine here? Imagine vodka on a hen night and you were pretty close. The only problem was it was sweet and easy to down so he didn't realize how drunk he was until he was.

Whoop's?


	8. Outfits and outfitters

Tony found where Loki was stood clearing away some of the carnage and padded over to him.

"Poisoning your brother? So un-original." Loki turned round, noticing him. He chuckled softly.

"Again, it's traditional."

"Got anything else planned then? Not gunna let me down are you? I'm expecting great things from you, Potter." Tony really should've expected that amused, confused stare he got in response. He coughed down that bubble of random drunkenness that was climbing up this throat.

"Nothing as brave as I usually would." Loki cleared his throat, putting down the napkin and smoothing back the stray hairs on his forehead. "How was it?"

Tony looked around the wrecked and wicked room, the last few lingering guests started to get up and go, half falling over as they walked. "This?"

"If you'd like."

"Well It was..." It was on the tip of his tongue "...A definite something."

Loki started his farewells, pats on shoulders and specific hand or eye movements. A unique one for every person. Back to Stark, Loki continued the conversation.

"You enjoyed it?" Loki took to assumptions, not something he usually did.

"Hmm... Enjoyed is relative. It did remind me of a thing I had a while back. Of course yours had more dodgy CGI and less drink." Loki stuck to asking questions about the words he actually understood. Loki started to leave the room. Tony followed.

"There was plenty to drink."

"Have you ever been on a pub crawl?" Loki was silent for a second.

"A what?"

"My point. Hush."

He felt a little out of place, but in a good way. There was Loki in all that fancy ceremonial armour, almost as bright and gold as the rest of this palace, and there he also stood in a pair of ripped up denim and a bloody, slightly crispy grey tee. He should have accepted that offer of new clothing. He was starting to smell a bit like the stables.

"Do you have any music? I dunno - Radio? That medieval enough right?" Loki smiled. "Apparently not. Well at least you don't have dubstep - that would end me."

"Is he evil?"

Apparently Loki didn't understand why Tony was laughing so hard he nearly fell over, but he laughed too anyway.

"He's an art form... Bit like a tomatoes a fruit. You don't include it in desserts."

"Would you like me to call a bard?"

"No - people singing to me creeps me out."

"He can stand away from us."

"No really, I'm fine. Lets go swimming" Loki's neck clicked at the speed of it's straightening, teeth bared between his sly smile.

"At four hours after sunset?"

"Well - No kids, no pissy pools." Tony thought he had a valid point there.

Loki stopped and turned to face him, brushing off his shoulders and straightening his shirt. "I cant say your means are orthodox, but who am I to argue with a guest?"

Loki took Tony, via a short cut known as magic, to the River Asgard.

Outside the distant Palace there were a barely visible mound of what must be the last remaining people to leave the feast. Apart from that, the star lit and planet lit streets were quiet. So there he was standing by the side of the glistening river, trying to get a sock off but it caught on his little toe, so unfortunately he was a little too long with only one foot on the ground. He was in the water now, fully clothed, if minus one sock, that lay mockingly dry on the grassy, dry dirt bank.

Loki sat on that grass and read.

Bastard.

It was only once he decided it was time to get out, at sometime a few more hours after sunset when curious Asgardians emerged from their metallic dens, that he realized his quite serious problem. Loki was casually folding his wet clothes into a neat pile, sat them onto the grass and walked off. He hadn't taken them clothes off himself. He suddenly felt dirty. But Tony called out in protest, splashing water in Loki's vague general direction, succeeding only in making another puddle on the bank.

"Fine!"

Well, he'd accept that offer of new clothing now.

He hopped out, stark naked (haha) and hobbled away once others tried to join him in the river. If he didn't not care so much about others seeing him naked, he might have run. Well he was, but that most certainly wasn't the point. It _was_ a chill morning in fall, and he _was_ soaked to the bone in night-chilled river water. He didn't want to lose... bits.

As Tony ran into the hall, shadows his only friends at present, he heard footsteps coming down the hall towards him. He ran to what he assumed Loki's room, dodging any one of the major Asgardians. A few lucky strangers had just seen the sight of their lives. He spotted that damned fool of a godas he entered, already stood facing away by the window. "Now is it me, or did that water smell- You're a douche" Loki turned back to face him, dripping clothes still hung over his arm like he was some perverse waiter.

"I booked your appointment with the seamstress."

Tony stopped. "Seam_stress?_"

"This way please."

* * *

Loki pushed him in and locked the door. A perfect gentleman. An apron wearing woman turned to face him.

"Hello there!" The seamstress looked pleased to see him. She was a red faced, middle aged, graying woman, similar in size to Odin.

"Hey..."

"Oh," She pulled him by the bare shoulders to look into a mirror, then turned him to faced her. She looked him up and down, "well, you're an eager beaver aren't you?" Tony wanted to cry, a lot. He cupped his pride with cooling hands.

"I don't usually go around like this, although I made an exception this morning." She huffed sweetly, smiling with crooked teeth. He tried to mimic her, but it came out a little odd.

"Well, I think you'd look good in red- Just wait there a moment and we can get started" Tony shuffled, almost nervously.

"Does the door lock?"

"Now why would it do that?"

Great, just great.

He's going to kill that blue skinned bastard.

* * *

"It'll be ready when you wake, my dear."

As he exited the room in a red silk robe and a fresh pair of Asgardian under robes which were more like wrapped linen nappies, he was greeted by a face he greedily welcomed.

"Please tell me you're here to escort me to bed?" Thor was smiling at him, something he wasn't wholly used to. The dark rings around his eyes were the left overs of his little celebration, the brown lipstick on his cheek too, apparently.

"That to, but I am firstly here to thank you."

Tony looked around them. "In a corridor?" He thought the thanks would come in the form of some grand ceremony, that would be nice.

"I was just passing, I heard your voice" So it was a make do and mend affair? Whoop.

He shrugged it off. "Well, you know, It's fine. Don't worry about it."

"I am sorry you must be so far from home. That cannot be nice. But my brother is searching, for now I hope Asgard will be a good home to you as it is to us all."

"Thanks, so do I." He smiled tiredly. "A good home tends to have a bed."

Thor smiled. "Of course, this way"

* * *

As Thor shut the door, without even stripping, Tony collapsed face down onto the cream silk sheets and was swept into a land of home and Pepper and sleep. He didn't even give himself time to take in his surroundings.

When he awoke, as the harsh sun half waved through his curtains and tickled at the skin on his neck, he groaned. This bed, whatever it was made of was the best thing he had ever laid his loins on.

But boy was he hungover. He slid out of bed with as much grace as a giraffe and crawled on all fours to the window where he hoisted himself up by the ledge and peered outwards. He shut his eyes, imagining what he wanted to see, not what he actually did.

"Good morning." Loki greeted with his silver tongue. Tony made a vague groan of response. Loki probably had sat down but Tony wasn't really too interested in that. "My friends have invited you to spend time with them at noon, if you wish?"

"Sounds good. What they have in mind?"

"They didn't specify but knowing them, something they shouldn't be doing."

"Say's he."

Loki started on a different topic.

"I would assume that the glowing power in your chest is attached to you in someway, considering it stayed with you during two different sets of clothing?"

"Yep, it's in there alright." He demonstrated quite casually, still not distracting himself from the imagined view.

"Any reason?"

"Nothing important."

"Is it a weapon?"

"Erm, no" He picked at the hem of the golden curtain, his mind seated in a completely different window.

"So," Tony cried, breaking himself from his revere and spinning into a standing position. "what's on the menu tonight?" He pushed himself down into the other chair beside the bed, stretching out his toes, hearing a distinct crack and being pretty sure that wasn't too healthy.

"Tonight you may meet Sigyn. Although perhaps not. Entering Asgard would be a feat, given last time" Okay, new background into Loki's dark and deeply personal life. He was honored. The name of said mystery however was hardly revealing... Assumed female until proven male.

"So spill. What happened last time?" Loki couldn't be part of any mischief could he? Oh no, that would be-

Loki just raised an eyebrow, but had given up hope of understanding anything the new man said.

Tony continued "I suppose it was completely not your fault and she was merely victim to some unfortunate, poorly-timed circumstance."

"Of course."

"So, come on, fess up."

"Fess_ what_?" Aw bless his ignorance.

"What happened?"

"It was simply a misunderstanding between her and Volstagg."

"Fat jokes?" Tony tutted disapprovingly.

"...And a barber" Of course.

"Never a good party until the barber arrives."

A young looking maid knocked on the door, walking in at Tony's permission. She had his newly made clothes in her arms. He winced at the leather the maker had insisted on. 'It's only fit for your standing' she had repeated like he was the king, not Odin. Luckily he'd bargained for cotton pants and shirt, just a leather jacket/cape thing. To be honest, the red and gold patterning and dyes were something to behold.

"Well, I'll leave you too it" Said Loki, leaving the room in the blink of an eye, probably off to make his life more of a hell than it was already turning out to be.

He was beginning to feel like Loki was his babysitter, and that was an extremely uncomfortable notion.

* * *

Apparently the maid was shocked when Tony asked to dress himself but she let him. So he started wondering the hall, only just about remembering the way back to the great hall. He shook off his headache with a practiced ease and met with his new group of friends. They wanted to go hunting. Tony was game for that.

Once he returned, not a mouse to his name, his companions went off to cook their meats and left him to make his own way back to the bed chambers. Tony didn't understand what was wrong with calling it a bedroom.

The sun had set about half an hour ago, leaving his room dark with unlit candles. He couldn't be bothered to light them. Luckily, before he had time to breathe for himself, Loki was in his doorway, smirking. The candles in the room combusted into life, semi-blinding the poor mortal with harsh force. Loki dragged Tony off to be some letter on his scrabble board.

Loki sort of explained the situation, but in that round about way that annoying people do.

Tony tried to simplify the matter.

"So we're basically sneaking out after curfew to go meet a girl?" Loki looked away in something distantly related to disgust. Perhaps a cousin. "Well, I haven't done that in..." Tony slumped. "Well, no I never had a curfew so technically, never but hey, first time for everything."

"Please stop talking."

"Oh and if you are sweet on this girl, which you are don't even try, why the hell are you going dressed like that?" Loki popped a vein. What was wrong with what he was wearing? Everything, according to this human. But before Tony's hand even got close to ruffling up his perfectly slicked hair he was in a slightly bewildered mess on the floor, Loki quickening his pace down the corridor. "You pushed me" Sounding like a kicked puppy was now something he could officially add to his CV under Special Skills. Alongside Thermonuclear Physics and Awesomeness. God, Loki ran fast, which was incidentally the same sentence with or without the comma. When he did catch up, they were almost at the meeting point. It was however missing the third of the party, who had presumably yet to arrive.

Lo, the black and red goddess arrived, a little oddly dressed, not that anyone here was complaining. Mainly for fear she'd eat them, she looked rather... fierce. She handed both him and Tony a drink before making one for herself out of nothing but the night air and 'magic.' Tony laughed - alcohol, or an approximation even before they were acquainted. Clearly she had good tastes, Tony liked her.

Loki passed her a coat, albeit one he simply _pulled out his-_ the air. The night carried a chill and she had less than was probably necessary to cover her bones.

"Did I never teach you anything?" Tony almost expected a 'my dear' at the end of that.

"Many a thing, actually." She accepted the coat but it just as quickly disappeared in her own hands. "I just never had the strength to listen to your awfully dull and..." He growled discretely into his drink. "Beautifully symphonic voice." Loki's next moan indicated approval. "A lady can look after herself" His next semi-gargle indicated something completely different.

"Alright, enough with the flirtations" Tony interjected, feeling a little like a third wheel, a thing he was wholly un-used too. "I haven't disappeared into a cloud of smoke you know. I for one am not a coat"

"Would you like to be?" Well, he was glad Sigyn found Loki's completely un-funny jokes entertaining. He certainly didn't.

"Oh, just drink your..." He looked down into his own cup. "...Mysteriously glowing sludge." He swirled the cup, splashing neon green liquid onto the grass which the earth greedily drank up. Grass of course, was not sentient and also blind, so it was expected.

"Sigyn, this is Tony Stark, a hitchhiker here until we figure out what dimension he comes from."

"Oh," She sounded intrigued, if slightly uninterested at the same time.

"And Tony Stark this is of course Sigyn, hitchhiker here until she apologizes to Volstagg, profusely."

"He looked like a girl!" She exclaimed in self-defense.

"Tell _him_ that."

"I am not stupid" She scoffed, crafting her own coat around her shoulders as bumps pricked at her skin. A silence fell over them and Tony decided to back into his own head. Less drinkable flubber there.

"You look stunning" Loki commented, finishing his slimy soup. Tony nearly choked on his Listerine. He decided to lean against the staircase fence, quickly opting to sit on them. The stone was cold on his ass, but he felt his legs trembling in grossed-outness.

"But..." She finished, a grin on her full dark lips.

"You would look so much better in my colors" She mouthed the words with him as if she had heard them all a thousand times.

"At least I add stability" Mocked Tony, crossing his legs in a futile display of un-comfort and anger. Why was he needed for this flirt fest? Seeing Sigyn's gaze turn upon him and look him up and down made him feel a little queasy.

He took another sip of that mildly horrid radioactive backwash and regretted it.

Tony finally went to bed, leaving those two love birds to nest in peace. They didn't stop him.


	9. Store rooms and searches

To be honest, all this hassle started when he shut his eyes.

No, he wasn't talking about being in Asgard or about everyone's all too sudden hospitality, but of that wretched pain in his chest somewhat connected to some rather negative emotions. He knew what was 'upsetting' him but he didn't want to acknowledge it, for fear of worsening anything, which thinking about it would be quite hard.

But what in hell was he doing? Even for Tony Stark this was 10.9 on the Richter scale of insanity. And he felt worse that he didn't feel worse about that.

He was happily staying in some foreign place with foreign friends and enemies, not even waving a finger to try and get home quicker.

He was all too aware about the many possible reasons concerning the subconscious truths regarding to all that.

When his body relaxed in the silken sheets and his brain wandered into semi-unconscious territory, his brain whispered memories at him, which really wasn't helping the situation. Apparently almost dying in a black hole then almost dying burning up in a foreign atmosphere was pretty traumatic, given everything else he's ever been through over the span of his 48 year long experience of this messed up, drugged up thing impersonating life.

Now for actual sleep to take it's turn.

* * *

While Tony slept in the room next to his, Loki absently dried his hair with a towel with one hand while scribbling in records with his left. His consultation took longer than expected, Sigyn had many responsible questions. He had almost forgotten her love for details. The scratches of the quill over rough paper was the only accompaniment to the dance of Loki's script. He took this moment of calm to write it all down. What had happened, but not what part Loki had played in it. Obviously. He wrote of Tony's arrival, of Thor's return to Asgard, and of Sigyn's visit (This was his personal copy after all) but all in vague, un-revealing ways, as any trickster learns to at a young age.

Closing his record and discarding the towel, Loki sat back in his chair, breathing deeply through his nose. The cinnamon intense flowed through his senses, the Asgardian Jade leaf followed soothingly. He had put it off to long, he now had to figure out where Tony had come from. It was playing monotonously on his mind.

He had said he would, but he would not go to Heimdall, that all-seeing, arrogant servant.

Of course he respected him and his awesome power. He just couldn't have him knowing the vast amount of truths Loki kept hidden in his heart, for if Heimdall revealed them, what little trust the others had in him may be blown out as if the candle that had burnt them would be from their own breath. The gatekeeper was hiding enough truths of his own and in good time he would discover what.

He of course loved his tricks - he _was_ the god of mischief, if by self proclamation. They were mostly harmless and to some infantile but he hurt few. Others would not see some of them that way, which is why they have to be secret. He was sometimes truthful - he was not fully false. He loved freely and fully and hated only with reason. There is a rather thick line between hatred, jealously and envy, just others ignore that line as if it were chalk. It may well be, but a line is a line.

He trusted his own abilities, for well tested and tried were they. He sat, fingers laced on his stomach and eyes blinkering beneath their lids. With a spritz of gold the door locked, the curtains drew and the smell of burnt wax filled the air, darkness following.

So many bright dots in the vast constant black of space layered his mind's view. To him it was a canvas with wet ink dispersed throughout the weaving. Water colours and oils and acrylics, all painted with the same brush but by a different artists. One single splodge of a golden oil shone the brightest. Asgard. It stood out like a beacon - _Home._ It whispered into the depth of his mind, reeling him in like a siren tries. But he had to look away. At first it hurts to redirect your focus with this ancient magic, then it feels soothing. Like you have disconnected from your body which in various different senses is what he had done.

Migard; or to the natives: terre, die Erde, bumi, terra, jordkloden to name a few, but to Tony Stark it was simply Earth.

It was a tiny planet. Nothing exciting. Boasting little more than a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, a few semi-developed primates and a iron nickel core, it didn't strike Loki as a no. 1 holiday destination, although he had to admit, on his rare adventure there, many thousands of years ago he had found the wines and mead's to be a great delight, as well as teasing the locals a little. His younger days were a little more... adventurous than now. But he must focus.

This was not Tony's time, he knew, so he focused on one spot, where Tony stood four days ago and flicked through like the pages of a book, looking to see where there was none. There were of course those universes where he had died of some horrible freak accident, where an experiment had gone wrong or where illness struck him down. Then there were ones where he had different names and different homes and different mother tongues. In a few he found Antonia and Antoinette, in even less he found two Tony's, brothers by birth, or three and in a single instance four. So many variations but the one he almost didn't want to see was the one that was missing a man unduly.

His eyes snapped open, pupils, once large recoiled, lungs gasping at the air they had neglected themselves.

He knew. Not that he had to tell anyone that. Not just yet. He turned to sleep as his next action.

As Loki lay resting in his velvet sheets, mind numbed, something moved in the room, taking his journal to read during the night and to then return before Loki rose.

* * *

Somewhere else, as the sun was busy somewhere else, far outside the borders lurked a small gathering of petty beasts. Nothing too significant. Much like Midgardian goats but with greater, thicker horns. They were idly grazing on the sun nourished grass that shone ivory in the moons gaze. A brisk yet brilliant wind stirred in the air, swirling patterns out of the clouds, grey in the midnight blue of the night-time sky. As the beasts chewed and swallowed and digested with three stomachs, another strange beast was eating, just not on grass, on man.

* * *

The next morning, the Asgardian council consisting of the two princes, the king, his wife and a few Councillors, were sat in their meeting spots with grave faves and gravelly tones.

"Eigdler beast? Aren't they extinct?" Asked Thor at the news of the nights events.

"Well apparently not, my brother" Loki answered, thinking for a second "But they were. It can be quickly herded, let us hope it is not a pack" Thor agreed with a low hum.

"Poor man, poor family." Commented Odin, his fingers laced loosely on the table. His face was particularly pasty this morning, Loki noted.

With quick decisions and quicker preparations, Loki, Thor and a small group of guards went off to find this beast and control it in whatever way required.

* * *

Once Tony woke, his skin busy with goosebumps and hair sticky with grease, he decided that it really was time for a shower.

He dragged himself out of bed, slipping into the robe that now did nothing to stop the chilled air. Outside it was dark and gloomy, the clouds in the early sky were not friendly looking to say the least. But even so, ignoring the quick nips of frost as his feet touched the cold stone with every step, he moved out into the corridors. Torches lined the walls, already lit and so making it a much warmer place to be. Said corridors were empty and quiet. He looked both ways, deciding that he'd go left. That was the only way he hadn't been.

After minutes of walking he came to where the corridor split in two. Again, he took a left. Here the torches weren't lit, the bite of the air was a little harsher. He wrapped himself tighter in the robe. This particular route took longer to traverse than it looked, every step seemed to move him half as much as it should, but finally he reached the end. Without knowing what he may find behind the rounded door in front of him, he pushed into it. Much to his disappointment, it was locked. He took to trying the other door on the other side. This time he traveled via a brisk jog, still feeling slightly disconnected from the lumps at the end of his legs. This door opened, except it wasn't a shower but a storage cabinet.

How many brooms did these people need? It had shelves and shelves stocked with thing after thing that Tony didn't recognize.

A cleaner from behind him, tapped him on the shoulder making him yelp like a little girl.

"Can I help you, sir?" He asked, putting the torch he was carrying into the wall sconce. The servant's face held an expression that let Tony know that he probably shouldn't have been here.

"I was looking for the shower?" Tony replied, the maid stifled a laugh.

* * *

With the warriors three and Lady Sif off unofficially joining the hunt, Tony was left to his own devises, and that was never good news, ever.

Weather in Asgard is as predictable as the people. One day it may be hot, the next snow could dust the ground. One hour the clouds may pass and the sun will shine only for a new wind to bring more hail and storm and sleet. When Tony had been dressed that morning it was threatening a cold winter blizzard, now it was past midday and the windows glinted gold. Tony was sat sweating like a beast in the food hall, in the corner where the sun wasn't hitting, alone, waiting for the others to return.

He was clean and sweat free this morning. He'd spent two and a half hours in a giant, black stoned, _communal_ bath with his eyes shut simply because he didn't want to see anything thing that he _wouldn't _want to see. Pointless, all that effort was now.

When Loki, free of his group for a moment finally came through the doors, he didn't see Tony at first, instead went straight for the seasoned chicken. It _was_ good chicken; leftovers from the breakfast Loki's hunting team had neglected in order to end the threat earlier. He was dressed in light robes, skin a pale pink. It was when he turned to leave the hall that he laughed out loud with glee.

"Are you joking, you'll kill yourself" Loki strode up to him all not sweaty and cool "May I?" Tony almost cried at the offer, standing with protesting muscles.

"Please do." Loki pulled at the leather buckles at Tony's shoulders, chest and waist, pulling off each leather layer with skill. At last Tony was free of his arduous 'protective' gear. He could not remember ever being happier or more content with life than in that moment.

"Oh so that's what air tastes like?" Tony was grateful beyond belief for that intervention between him and heatstroke. Half collapsing into Loki, clamping an appreciative arm down on his shoulder, Tony laughed in spite of himself.

"You should have looked as they dressed you." Tony just mocked him sourly, feeling cool air touch his sticky skin. He hated leather. A lot. "Mock me till you drop, but we are on a schedule. The beast is reigned but you, Fangar and me are all on patrol in the outer reaches. Now you are suitably dressed, we will find you arms and set off. Is that okay?"

Tony replied with a meaningless grunt. "Not really"

They left to join the rest of Loki's party, a strip of chicken in Tony's hands.

Tony chose a clumsy sword as his weapon. Clean, effective, not too dangerous if he hit something other than an intended target. Fangar was to be his mentor. All Asgardians, permanent or not must be able to wield arms to some degree. Tony could fight with his hands, he had strong muscles and quick wit and he could make a makeshift weapon out of almost anything, but swing a blade he could not.

An Eigdler beast was perhaps a harsh first lesson but you cannot learn to swim in shallow waters.

* * *

When Tony got back, after hours of running towards and running away from various cattle, he wasn't anymore hopeful about the future than he was before he left. Two new bruises, a cut on the cheek and a rather unnecessary grass stain on his new pants. All of which were inflicted by Loki, not in fact the very thing they were hunting.

Give a man an opportunity to maybe beat up and humiliate another and he takes it. It that what royalty in Asgard is about?

Apparently.

Only one more Eigdler beast was found. They managed to corner him in the outerland-forests and eventually kill him at Fangar's hand. An arrow was shot right between it's eyes.

This particular species of moose's extinction had now been re-instated.

To celebrate, guess what they had?

Roasted Eigdler beast.

Tony reckoned it tasted a bit like prawn, which was, granted, a little odd given that it isn't a fish but true none the less. Though the others had no idea what a prawn was and so couldn't agree or disagree, he held that belief firmly. Everyone of Both parties was there, except their two most esteemed leaders, who were off compensating and comforting the families.

The rest of the day passed with out a hitch, the sun setting peacefully and it's people, on the whole, content.


	10. Fans and Fiction

For some odd and unexplainable reason, the next day Tony found himself sitting in the library, the large, red gilded hardback of Ragnarok in his hands. He had take to spending a lot of his time here recently. He'd almost immediately read up on the resident Frost Giant and then taken to learning the nitty-grittys of Thor's past, and boy they both had a troublesome up bringing. Some of the books he had read on Loki's past were illustrated, and what he wouldn't give for them not to have been. When he said illustrated, he meant vividly illustrated. As in 'R rated' illustrated. The memories still make him shiver. So learning his lesson he'd taken to reading the less specific books and more about lore and myths. How did a place like Asgard have myths? Asgard _was_ a myth.

But today he was lounged in one of their great high backed chairs, an old man and a few young children also scattered around, likely too young to be able to read a word.

Talking about being unable to read a word, Tony was struggling a little. Not only was the particular font in this particular volume of books handwritten and ridiculously tiny, it was also in a completely foreign language.

That's when the old man appeared behind him. Tony near dropped the book.

"The old language." He almost sounded in awe, his words breathy and quiet. "Can you read it?" A little creeped out by the old guys tone but bored enough to welcome the conversation, Tony answered.

"I can hardly read the new one." He yawned, placing the book down on the table. Still open, the pages were yellowed and old, the ink faded and the edges uneven and dog-eared.

"It's beautiful." Tony looked up to the man. "I wonder when a new volume will be written in our tongue, and us the characters."

"Well, hopefully not any time soon. I'm not even meant to be here." Running a hand down his thick stubble, Tony didn't notice the mans look of surprise.

"I see, so you are a foreigner?"

"I think so. We're having a bit of trouble."

"Well then, my names Ranthol, Asgards book-keeper." They shook hands, the librarians hands a little dry and wrinkly but warm none the less. If he was the librarian, why hadn't he seen him earlier? This place just keeps surprising him.

"Well, it's a nice place you got here, Ranny." Tony commented, sparing a quick glance around the tall dark book shelves, the candles that were a considerable fire hazard and the few seating places that were mostly empty.

"It is my soul purpose to guard these books with my life. They are our history, our present and in one or two cases our future. They are the hand of our ancestors and the minds of those before us." Ranthol seemed proud and mighty. Much in the same way that a milkman thinks he rules the roost.

"Well there's certainly quite a few of them." Tony took to tapping the death march onto the wooden table he was sat at.

"These are only a limited number. More are kept safe in storage." Tony briefly wondered about Asgardian technology. He for one was not going to buy into that 'its-magic' bull. It was technology, plain and simple - advanced, granted but nothing he couldn't figure out. With all this technology, why the hell did they still need books?

Tony looked up at the call of his name.

"Ah- Anthony!" A strangers voice came from behind a great bookcase, the owner running out. "You are Anthony?"

"Tony, yeah."

"Could you get this book to him for me? He was asking about it earlier, said I'd look, and I have." The woman held a book out to him. Tony waited for it to be put on the table first before he took it.

"Give it to who?"

"Why, Loki of course. Who else but us reads Mystic books anymore?" She was pretty; long blonde hair, short green dress... dagger in her belt...

"Why do I have to take it?" Tony continued, drawing his eyes back to the book he'd been burdened with. He'd only just escaped the damn man, now he had to go hunting for him?

"Don't you spend a lot of time together?"

"Not generally by choice." She seemed to consider this, then quickly came up with another factor.

"You're one of the few people who actually knows where his bedroom is."

"What?" Should Tony take that as a privilege?

"He keeps changing it." The Librarian he was previously talking to now went back to work, shuffling the books Tony was previously reading, the dust on the table jumping at each bang of book to mahogany. "Likes his privacy and all that."

"He doesn't always sit in his room? What if he's out?"

"It's Thor's day, he's always in his room on Thor's day. Unless he's out sulking, which he hasn't done in a while. So." She smiled. "Please would you take the book to him?" She wandered off before he could further his case.

She seemed suitably annoying.

Tony stared blankly at a few more old books, wasted time trying to find something porn-related and then left the library, book in hand and feeling rather unsatisfied. From there he wandered back to his room, fingers starting to itch for something to build, mind stagnating with lack of bright blue lights and good coffee. This must have been the longest time he'd gone without tinkering. Even when he was in a cave he had more machinery at his disposal than Asgard. The beast of a book was thrown clumsily to the table, his butt went to the chair and head straight to forming plans.

His suit need space-proofing, he concluded.

Loki had wrecked the suit he'd brought with him so that was beyond repair. Didn't he see a blacksmith down in country lane?

Before he knew it the dinner bells were ringing through the castle, drawing hungry Asgardians and humans in alike.

* * *

Once dinner was downed and his belly suitably filled with puddings and sweet ale, Tony decided that he really should go do his chores. So on his way to Loki's abode, of course stopping off at his own room to get the actual book, he painfully noted that their rooms were practically next to each other, and the reason no one seemed to know where Loki's room was at, was because the door to it didn't appear until Tony approached it.

The door swung open before Tony touched it. He didn't like being out of control. He shivered.

"I didn't see you at dinner." Loki's head was already looking at him, expectantly. Tony stopped in the doorway, rapping his fists three times against the dark grain in a mockery of an entrance.

"I had already eaten." Loki explained, running his palms down his pants, looking away and down at his knees.

"Well, you managed to make that sound mildly sexual." Tony suddenly remembered the reason for coming. "I got your brick." Loki nodded and held out his arm requesting it. Tony walked in and with his own stretched arm handed it over. Tony grimaced as Loki flicked through the pages, skim reading within seconds then putting it in his lap as if it were precious.

"Come and sit." Tony still stood, crossing his arms.

"You're not looking too hot. What's up, buttercup?"

"Nothing." Loki looked back up to Tony's, eyes a little dimmer than last they spoke. A small silence passed, Tony took to examining the room. It was nice - a little big. Bigger than the size of the hallway should have allowed.

"So can I go now or..?" Tony motioned to the door, seeming now further away than when he had walked in.

"You may leave." And Tony did.

Within a few seconds he was back in the room.

"Do you have anything... mechanical?" Loki looked up at his re-entrance.

Loki stood, moving the book to where his butt had been. "What do you mean, exactly?"

"You know the suit I had on?" Tony gestured towards himself, trying to telepathically get the image across. "The Iron Man suit?"

Loki took a moment to recall. "Yes."

"What did you do with that?" Did Tony sound desperate? He thought he did.

"It was useless. I destroyed it." _Baby..._

"Well then do you remember what it looked like?"

"Vaguely."

"Can I... procure some of the same stuff to make another?"

Loki seemed to take an age to answer. "I need designs."

"On it." Tony bounded out the room with his usual attitude towards everything, _not_ the one he had home-grown over the last week. "HAPPY THOR'S DAY!" He shouted back, still running, confident he was still close enough to be heard, but far away enough not to be mutilated.

He could of sworn something exploded back there. Something told him Loki had a few issues, even now.

He got the design paper from Miss Crazed-Book-Woman and the seemingly lone pencil in the whole of Asgard from the old man Librarian. For the love of everything he couldn't find a ruler so he used some piece of wood that after many decisions decided was straight enough. He turned his room into a workshop: The desk was cleared of trinkets and candles and replaced with developing blue prints; the ornate floor, once clean was now systematically littered with a few bits he'd found in the very same store cupboard he'd found on his earlier expedition around the castle.

It was makeshift but he had to start from somewhere.

He knew he'd only be here for another week, but he still needed something to do. All this 'traditional lifestyle' business was slowly rotting him from the inside out. He needed fuel cells and circuits otherwise he went rusty.

It took half a day to have all the designs ready for Loki to take to the blacksmiths.

It took two days for his order to be completed by a team of big sweaty metal workers, and from then it only took half an hour for Tony to get to work.

He'd made the designs for a suit, but given he probably hadn't the three weeks here he would need to build that, he made a few adjustments to his pieces and started on a few smaller scale projects.

* * *

Loki himself, when he was not running errands and consulting various books, was steeping in growing fatigue and envy. Both for different reasons.

He had searched in the Book of Archaic Spells and they too did not hold the answer.

He daren't ask that novice of a witch Amora again. How she irritated him. He asked her for a specific book and she sends someone else to do her work. He didn't ask Tony for a reason. She was skilled and smart but she lacked that something. Loki trusted her little and although she was a fun plaything, she was little use to him most of the time.

So instead he went to the only other person he knew he could trust. His mother. She was pleased as he pushed through her chamber doors. Father was out on official business so it was just her and him. She stood to greet him, he accepted her embrace.

Waiting for her to pull away he started: "You know about magics, mother, more than I ever could."

"Well I wouldn't go that far," She laughed in modesty. "but what is troubling you."

"In all my lessons as an infant, there was always a spell you would never teach me-"

"Loki-"

"You hid the books from me and I only found of it's existence through gaps in my knowledge of other things. I know what it is now. Teach me, please."

When Loki was a babe, she _had_ taught him a few tricks she remembered, she then tutored him through more advanced spells but now Loki has surpassed her and was asking for long buried but vividly remembered spells. Dangerous spells that could reveal something to him that they had kept hidden so well.

"Why would you want that spell, my boy?" She clasped her hands over her stomach, her baby boy seeming impossibly large as he stood in front of her. Something was not right with him.

"Father has knowledge of it."

"Father is old enough and wise enough to use it properly, and you did not answer my question."

"Am I not wise enough to wield it?"

The fact that Loki chose 'wield' suggested to her that, no, he was not mature enough.

"Let us not play games Loki. Why do you want it?" Loki let his anger tangle in his throat. He did not wish to expel his tiredness and aggravation on her. He loved his mother, and she did not deserve his tone. He told her the truth.

"Somebody is taking my own power." Her mouth opened softly, her beautiful blue eyes widening in surprise.

"No one knows this spell."

"Obviously they do." With some hesitation, she took him in her arms again, stroking a comforting hand over his hair.

"It seems like they are taking more than your magic."

"Whoever it is may be injured. They are taking far more than I can, and that they know I can give."

"Why did you not tell me earlier?" He went to answer but she cut him off, answering her own question. "Because you thought you could handle it yourself, as always." She ran a thumb down his pale cheek. "Will you never change?"

"I do hope not." His face straightened again. "Give me the spell." Frigga dropped her hands to her side.

"How would you perform it, as weak as you are? I shall perform it on you."

"No." Loki was too quick to answer, Frigga looked at him, the corners of her pink lips curling down. He smiled that smile that drove back suspicions. "It is only that you have told me you no longer wish for magic. I would not force it on you. I have some strength. Enough."

"My son, you do not understand."

His voice spiked. "Enlighten me." Frigga stepped away from her son, face hardening.

"Me and your father have agreed that no one should posses that knowledge. Not even you, Loki." She was lying. He knew the face of a liar.

"Then fall back into old habits."

"Loki."

Her son turned on his heels and strode from the room, neglecting her calls as if she were silent. Something was undoubtedly, and terribly wrong.

Loki breathed heavily as he strode down the darkened corridors. His heart raced, pounding in his ears. He fell to his knees as his muscles gave way. No one was around to see. On the ground, and with sweating skin he pushed away the sickness in his stomach. He stood again, steadying himself on the wall, palms slipping slightly on the dark oak paneling. He felt the connection between him and some unknown opposition and pushed against it. It broke again, and he was washed down with a faintly replenished power. That would keep the transfer at bay for a little while, but it would soon be back. It was getting worse every time. He had to figure out who this was; they were turning him a fool. How dare they? They will pay for their treason.

His mother would not help his efforts, and as his rival's sickened mind joined with his and played with his emotions, he was more upset about that than he usually would be. He understood his mothers reluctance, but his mind was darkening. He was thinking thoughts he had never thought before.

He filled his lungs with air and walked off to find some sleep.

There were some spells that even Loki, one of the greatest sorcerers in all the nine realms, could not undo, especially when it was not a spell causing his drain. Not that he knew that it wasn't.


	11. Achy-breaky-hearts

To distract himself from his mutinous mind, of which he was _completely in control of, _Loki turned his thoughts to his former primary and still secondary obsession: Tony Stark.

He would take to sitting with the man as he worked. Of course Tony minded immensely, often remarking how he felt like he was taking exams again, or not, seen as he only did two and flunked the others. He did alright out of it in the end.

When Loki made some snide remark about the faults of mankind, he nodded, knowing those listed were more than true.

When he commented on the careless way he worked, and the complete inefficiency of it all, he didn't throw a spanner at him, he didn't want to entertain the man.

When Loki said that his suit was useless and a disgrace to all he stood for, that's when Tony threw it.

The following damages, including more than a few dents in the mahogany and a clump of oynx shards of glass, which used to be ink wells, were all Loki's fault. How dare he.  
Loki does not take his insult back, so Tony has no choice but to throw the screwdriver - It's what he deserves after all. Except this time Loki's prepared, catches it and flings it back. Loki did so to make a point. He did not expect it to turn into what it did.

Throwing around heavy, pointed metal objects really shouldn't be a thing they were doing, but it never hit anyone... anywhere important.

By the end, there wasn't really much furniture you could use without fear of sitting on a nail, of which they used as ammo when the hammer got so stuck in the plastered walls, Tony couldn't, with all his Midgardian might, pull it out.

Tony ran from the room once an armistice was arranged, claiming to have jobs somewhere else, escaping the task of cleaning by a margin so minute that he could pluck it and get a g sharp.

"Bye - ass." It was a statement said in the false illusion that it would not be heard. Perhaps Loki would clear up the mess himself after all.

Tony's night didn't get any worse, it got better even as he strolled down the empty halls and passed by a quiet and serene window. The second moon, in all it's orange beauty was full tonight. It was so big it took up most of the window. It's penetrating gaze on him, and Tony's slightly intimidated glare back made something spectacular of the moment. Tony, all in one instant realized that he wasn't in Kansas anymore. As he counted the very visible craters in the red mass, he laughed. His sound ran through the open spaces and bounced back off the stone carvings on the ceiling. It must be about half two now. He stood there for a while, just taking it in. Never had tony meant to imply that when he said he preferred metal and nails over mother nature, that he could not appreciate the latter.

His tranquil peace lasted until he returned to his room, which was devoid of any Loki, and discovered the hard way that Said sadist had planted the collateral damage from their bickering on and under his bed sheets, then sealed them in, like the son-of-a-bitch he was.

That was an entertaining night for sure.

* * *

By the time the next night rolled past, Tony was back in his makeshift workshop and again Loki was in there, generally inspecting the strange objects and being a genuine burden on his temper.

Loki noticed and resented the harsh view Tony had on him. Tony was slowly accepting of him and considerably less hostile than when they had first met. All misunderstandings were resolved but still he caught those glimpses. There were times when Tony would look at him when he thought Loki was not and frown. A million untold story's would pass by Tony's lips and shine out through his eyes. So at half past midnight, while Tony was aimlessly tinkering Loki confronted him.

"Whatever some Loki has done in his name, I have not done in mine." He cleared away the last of the spilt ink from last night's partying with a flick of his wrist. The use of magic stung him, but he _was not_, and did not want to be seen as weak as he truly was. "I am burdened with many less than virtuous traits; some worse than others, some better. " He trailed off. "What one in particular do you hate?"

"Write them all down then tick 'em all."

"Obsession was always my strongest asset." Loki confirmed, strolling over from the other side of the room.

"Always nice to know." Tony assured him, still fiddling with that piece of circuit that never quite stayed connected very long.

"You have yours," He stated, taking the circuit off Tony and studying it closely in his own hands. "and I," He continued, looking down into Tony's eyes, "have mine."

"That's great and all, but can I have that back please?"

"Why?"

"I need it?"

"Why?"

"Alright, Socrates, give it back." Loki smiled, but that same smile faltered when he tried to teleport, but found his own circuits without a current. He was starting to understand Migardian physics, as primitive and volatile as it was.

So taking up plan B, Loki ran. Tony, with a cry of anguish, looked down at his work, noted that the piece Loki had stolen was necessary, and ran after him.

Unnecessarily long story short, they ended up in one of the abandoned guest rooms, of which there were many in Loki's great home; the chase only ending when Loki could not feel his feet. Not now, he cried to himself. He stayed standing, brushing off the tremendous load with a familiar fake smile and a sweetly demeaning word or two pointed at Stark.

Loki handed back the device, making some excuse to retire to bed. With all his failing might, _that he still had_, He could not dissuade Tony from following like a sheep dog. The pressure mounted, Loki forcing away the urge to attack and or hit something, namely Tony. So as he walked back into his room, only staggering as the door was slammed shut, he breathed a tired breath. He could feel Tony still behind his door, but facing better judgement ignored it.

Tony however, using Loki's weakness to barge through the door started continuing his earlier rant about how some things worked and others did not. Loki didn't like that specific conversation, which is why he had ended last time. He had no care of ending it now as he had a much simpler solution. Loki started stripping, first peeling off the layer of over leather, then unlacing his green cotton shirt. Tony now mistook this for a challenge and switched topics, the flow of his words quickening. Loki pulled off his shirt, after it had been neatly and precisely folded laid it on his Chester drawer. From where he had been facing away from Tony, showing off a back he new to be perfectly toned and shaped, he turned around, Tony's mouth curling as the words kept coming. Loki walked towards him, stopping centimeters away. He moved his hands to his belt, unbuckling then eventually pulling it from his waist. Tony's eyes stayed only on his face. Loki weighed the situation. Tony was not about to give in, and finding himself not in the mood for any further teasing, he turned back around, stripped to his undergarments and climbed into bed, Tony still wittering on about _something._

Tony definitely wasn't starting to notice the way he laid with his sheet to his breast and the stray foot that was hanging out the edge of the smooth satin covers. His ivory skin was glowing even paler in contrast to the rich black color of said sheet.

"Go to bed, Stark." Loki commanded, closing his eyes. Tony was silenced and complied. As Tony departed with a laugh and a quick wave of goodbye, Loki called to Sigyn but either she did not hear or was not replying.

He lay in his bed, colder than he had ever been before. His breathing was labored, this time he could not cut the thick cord. He had not the strength to stand and not even the strength to cry out.

Each attack seemed to be coming with less and less warning, and each one with more force.

Who could damage and control him so?

That pain in his eyes was growing and that led him to a disturbing conclusion.

It was no one from this realm that was causing his pain, he had mentally searched everyone. So this perpetrator must be from another, and which was he connected to? Tony's. Looking back to that spot behind his eyes lids, he wasn't sure why he hadn't made the connection before. Ripping away his focus from that blue and green spot Called Earth, the pain stopped. He gasped, eyes opening. For once in three days he wasn't being tapped on. He laughed to himself, throwing back the covers. He strolled around the room, flexing his now not aching muscles and cracking the loosening bones.

The only thing left to now uncover was the identity of this other being. Presumably Earthen, defiantly powerful and of great interest to Loki now.

He called for Sigyn again, she was always good with tracking people down. Again she didn't answer. He called a little louder in his mind. Stillness. She was busy then.

Again, he cursed himself for not thinking of this sooner. Perhaps the other was strong enough to prevent him doing so. That was the only logical reason for this overlook.

Feeling the strain of sudden power, he went back to bed, thinking quite wrongly that now his problems were solved for a while.

Loki woke with sweat on his skin. He jolted up, the sheets sticking to his torso. His breath was ragged, coming out in harsh and torn bursts. He tried to calm himself, his knuckles white over the damp fabric.

He blinked away the images but the horrendous clips forced their way back into his brain.

Why he hadn't dreamed in century's.

He remembered why he was grateful about that.

Then the hit came. It was not so much a hit more of a gentle nudge, like someone poking him with the point of a thin, blunt needle, very gingerly. It was odd, as if it was for him and only him. It felt like it came from within his mind. Somewhere in that cosmic composition of stars something had flashed very faintly but just for a second. He had more than a sneaking suspicion that it was a certain light that had flickered for a second.

He got dressed and left his room with haste.

Whoever was causing his previous pain was still trying to reach him. How persistent.

"Heimdall." He called, rapidly approaching the Bifrost. It was not yet dawn but there stood the gate-keeper as always.

"How can I help you, Loki?" The mans glazed eyes looked him over for the 100th time, taking in every detail. Loki's did the same.

"Who is down there?" Loki was direct. He needed answers and this was the only place he was going to get them.

"Where?"

"You know."

"Do I?" Loki laughed a concise laugh.

"I am really not in the mood."

"And what mood are you in?"

Loki stopped in front of him, chest out and temper thin.

"Tell me. Who is doing this to me?" Loki locked his eyes with the other Asgardian, threatening with all his might. His head started to ache.

"You may have broken the connection, my prince, but you have not broken the bond."

"Explain." Heimdall's lips were still. Loki wiped at the moisture atop his lips. Blood stained his boney fingers. Something vile inside him snapped. "Explain!"

"Do not yell at me." Loki's blood boiled, he stepped forward, face inches away from the gate-kepper. Still he did not flinch in response.

"You are a servant!" He cried, looking him up and down in disgust.

"You are not my master." Heimdall's cool voice only made his rage grow. In a fit of blinding anger Loki screamed. A flood of emotions that weren't his gushed from his mouth and eyes. He dropped to his knees. "That anger, Loki. That is not yours." Loki looked up, eyes wide. He was confused, the frustration in his bones ripping at him. He couldn't seem to catch his breath.

"Who is doing this?" He demanded, a pain in his chest that he couldn't control exploding.

"When Tony goes home, you must follow." Remaining as still and controlled as ever the gatekeeper bent down to touch Loki's shoulders as the red hot tears kept coming. "I am truly sorry. This is not a torment for you to bare." Heimdall stood again, returning to his usual stance. "Now be careful, Loki." He continued "The others are waking. You must stay in control. All answers will be revealed in their due time. Do not push." Loki grappled to his feet, looking away from the man's golden eyes.

"You knew this would happen." Loki accused, his fingers feeling too long and numbed. Heimdall took his chances and did not reply. That in its self was answer enough.

Why the breakdown? Why was any of this happening?

Loki didn't like this. He was no longer in control. All his plans were unraveling at his feet like fraying ribbons. His grip on Tony was failing, Heimdall was cryptic and he was having mental breakdowns every half a day. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't pull any tricks or play any scams. His powers were too unpredictable for that. He kept his face strong in front of others; he made other excuses for why he was suddenly calming and being less of a nuisance than usual. Thor would push him around and joke about it, his other friends would keep trying to guess, foolishly thinking they could possibly figure something even he could not out.

Eventually in the coming days he learned to suppress this side effect of power sharing. But it was all too late to do anything he wanted to with the human in his protection. He praised Odin that he had appointed he as Tony's keeper, which means quite simply that their constant togetherness was never questioned. But Tony was not one for playing easy to get and so all Loki's attempts at trying to escort the man failed. He soon 'gave up' and saved his energies for when they would both be on Earth and there are fewer frivolous and new things for Tony to be distracted by.

In all that time Loki was trying to be a man he could not be, Tony built a glove, dropped it off a balcony, mourned it for a good day and a half and then took to more theoretical work. Loki discovered the arduous way that Tony was a mumbler and a grumbler. When Stark could not take out his frustrations on 'Dummy,' he seemed to take them out on Loki, who Tony had grievously accepted as a common feature in his room, only there to watch.

In the end it reached that day. The day before Tony was due home.


	12. Hasta la Vista

On this, the penultimate day, Loki was walking down the halls alone. He seemed to be spending a lot more time here than anywhere else. He liked the way the sound of his soft footfalls traveled ahead and behind him all at once due to the acoustics of these great passageways. He often traveled the lesser trod parts of the great royal dwelling, meaning he was often, if not always alone. This gave him time to think and formulate.

How his life had changed all of a sudden. How quickly he had been proven penetrable. How quickly he had begun to loath himself, not even with any pinpoint-able reason. Saving strays would not become his hobby, he was sure of that.

He was, however walking down the corridors with reason this time. He was on his way to set up and insure a few final points in his plan and also to arrange the nights possible happenings.

He met with his brother, quite intentionally, who was reading the latest roster. Loki had neglected his own royal duties the last few mornings and Thor quickly inquired why.

"A problem of a private sort." Answered Loki stopping them by a dawn-lit window. The view outside this morning dazzled them in a beige light. Autumn was turning away from them, replacing the red and violent oranges with the chilled tones of almost spring. "Tell me, brother." Loki's voice lowered playfully. "What do you think?"

"About what?" Thor raised an all knowing eyebrow to Loki's game, taking in the serene morning also.

"Stark." Loki rolled the name off his tongue like a sweet melody. With his increasing health and dampening fatigue, he had more room in that chaotic mind of his for his little mouse, and his lined up tests ready and raring for action.

"I like the man. You must have him visit again sometimes. His tales of conquest are most entertaining." Loki failed to see how being near-fatally injured then allowing yourself to be held hostage was a tale of conquest, but as long as his brother was happy, so, in a way, was he. Loki recited a few more hinting words, made Thor laugh a number of more times and generally wasted his brothers time for a bit.

Once Thor finally set off again to tick his next duty off, it wasn't long until he found Tony picking at the jade grass near the bottom of the exterior steps. It was a communal patch where Tony should not have been picking but Thor let it pass. The man was having fun, breaking holes in the bottom middle of one stalk, lacing another through it and repeating when it fell through.

"You know, daisy chains are a lot easier to make with daisies." Tony starting, looking up to Thor who stood above him. Tony had one leg crossed under him casually.

"Daisies are the white ones, are they not?" Tony dropped his failing string of grass in order to run a finger over the smooth petals of an Asgardian flower that looked somewhat like a rose, if a turquoise rose.

"They don't have them here?"

"Alas, no. Our soil is too rich for them. They would over-feed and die."

"Well, there's a gloomy side to everything here, isn't there."

"Not really." Thor reasoned, taking in a lungful of gracious, sweet tasting air.

"Oh, if only you knew." Tony laughed at everything that had happened, and that still might but probably now won't. What trouble had he caused here? Would Loki still go dark side? Would New York still be attacked? Had he just done everyone he knew a massive favor, again?

"Excuse me?" Thor's frown burrowed. Tony realized how his previous statement might have sounded.

"Oh, nothing. Just a longing for home and a cynical outlook on everything worldly."

"I see." Thor looked around to where bypasses started silently at them, trying to seem as if they were not. "But really these flowers are not for touching, merely for looking."

"You mean Asgard's got laws on flowers?"

"Just these ones. They are for... Royal hands only." He spared Tony the details he wouldn't understand.

"Pick me one, then. I know a certain someone who'll like that." Thor bent down, plucking the lime thorned stem from the dark earth beneath it. Tony stood as Thor stood and parting like the friends they were, both went their separate ways.

Tony went back to his room. It was still early in the day and everyone seemed to be busy. No other day had he seen so few people wondering aimlessly as himself, and so many with heads down in parchments and papers and scrolls. I mean who even used scrolls anymore? Did that mean he was Harry, Ron or Hermione? Placing the plant gingerly to the table and removing his muddied boots with a newly accustomed ease he threw open the window. The warmth of the outside air mixed with the colder air of the stone walled room. It was refreshing, as everything else in the realm was. When he was actually looking at the actual view, not the one he very much wanted to see, it really was quite stunning. Many of the golden spires he'd seen on his many trips out were there as if they were nothing special. All this wonder was so commonplace. He had often seen himself and his makings as the ultimate beauty and as close to perfection as he was ever going to get, but seeing Asgard as the pale sun cast down it's soothing rays, it almost made him rethink about that. Very nearly almost.

Taking a moment to breathe and wonder, he realized that his room was so high up, mixing with the other towers instead of being drowned by them when he had never, in all his three weeks gallivanting round the castle seen a single staircase bar the ones outside. Asgard was weird, man. Shiny, but weird.

When he got home he had plans. He'd rebuild the tower somewhere warmer. He'd make it bigger and brighter and better in every way. He'd take Pep dancing every night for a month and generally have a great time.

Obviously he'd be roped in to help with reparations and restorations on most of New York, but he could deal with that. He just needed that one day off which he doesn't really feel he'd been given.

So after that little breather, once his feet began to numb, Tony trotted off to the feast hall, answering the call from his breakfast-deprived stomach. He walked in, the path now carved into his brain. A few straight hallways and three lefts and a right. Yet, the feasting hall was on the ground floor. Again, weird. He sat down next to Thor who was picking absently at something traditionally Asgardian, mind off somewhere else. Tony had personally stuck to the dishes he could pronounce, some of the others seeming a little Heston Blumenthal-ly.

Tony started the conversation.

"Weren't you playing police man?"

"I was. I finished"

"That was quick."

"Can I get you anything to drink?" Quick to change the subject, Tony noted but forgot. He plucked a bowl of almost 'Shredded Wheat' from the middle of the table. They didn't drink milk here so it was doused in sweet and pulpy orange-ish juice. Everything in this land was so different yet so suspiciously, coincidentally similar.

Tony replied, mouth full of wheat-by-product.

"Coffee." Thor motioned to one of the humming maids in the corner who happily obliged. Usually Thor would get his own drink, Tony too, but just this once, it was nice to both be treated a little like Royalty. Thoughts of coronation filled Thor's head much in the same way as home filled Tony's. Odin had put it off, feeling that now was not the right time but had promised that after Tony left, he would begin preparations. He wasn't excited about the power or fame, simply the prospects it brought. Kingship came with uncountable opportunities.

Once she returned, the hireling placed down the Asgardian beverage, as was requested, on the table, moving away again with a respectful bow and a returned smile from the suddenly unusually peppy god.

Tony had his first sip - gulping down like the depraved man he was. He almost spit it back up, but instead it came snorting back through his nostrils. Thor laughed in his face, slapping his thighs.

"That is not coffee." Tony protested in disgust, staring down into it wistfully, willing it to continue impersonating the real thing like the scum it undoubtedly was. Through monstrous laughter, Thor found the good will to reply.

"Our beans are slightly different to yours, but it's the closest we have - now drink up or I'll set a Volga beast on you." Tony sipped it like a kicked puppy licks a bone. Not coffee.

"Well," Tony considered the riches and prestige of this realm of honor, then looked back to his steaming brown cup. "You can't have everything."

"So, who was the flower for?" Thor inquired, seeming this morning to have a knack for plucking topics out of the aromatic air around them. Tony swallowed his fruity mouthful.

"My girlfriend, although I don't like that term. I prefer partner, signifys equality." Thor looked sideways at him, obviously a little taken back.

"You are courting?"

"You didn't know?"

"You never said."

"I didn't?"

And at that point Loki strode into the room, fixing the cuff of his shirt collar. It was too hot for leather this morning, so everyone was in their thin cottons. Loki donned his familiar green, Thor dressed in a rich red and Tony in a simple brown. Nothing out of the ordinary. Seeing Tony, Loki asked what he had been planning to later.

"I have just come from the kitchen, they wish you a good parting and have asked me to ask you. Is there anything specific you'd like to request on your last night in this realm?" Tony, ripped from his previous thread, thought long and hard and immediately replied.

"Stubble." Loki simply raised an eyebrow and did not comply. "Oh come on, you look like a five year old." Sif's snorts, who had just also entered but on her own duty rounds, could be heard half way across the great hall.

"On me? Stubble?" The look of shock in his green eyes made Tony snigger into his 'coffee'. Agreeing with his better judgement, Tony put down the cup and pushed it away. That earned a chuckle from Thor. Tony returned to the budding conversation.

"Well, _I've_ already got one. If you could count stubble as a singular thing."

"By request I meant for dinner, or an activity." Clarified Loki with a hidden strain in his voice. "I did not mean anything to do with my physical appearance, which is of course perfect without your corruption."

"You think stubble is corruption?" Tony took mild offense, stroking his freshly groomed beard-ette comfortingly, almost telling it not to listen to the nasty man.

Loki smiled at Thor who was still chuckling softly. "It is an attribute my brother carries, not me I'm afraid" Damn that Mischief maker and his smile. Loki pulled up and sat on a chair, not actually near the table but in front of Thor and Tony. He didn't eat.

"Well if I can't have some beard action, I want chips" A suitable compromise, considering the situation. Nigh three weeks without anything the least bit artificial- he was starved.

"Chips?" Loki sat straighter in the chair, wide kneed and bent forward - his obvious inner stripper shining through a little more with his intrigue. They came hand in hand, apparently.

"Fried potatoes - slices of deliciousness. I want chips, steak and peppercorn with a side of grilled cheese and that funny wine stuff they had at Thor's thing. That was like the tears of god..." He considered his choice of words"...The Jewish one..." His mind wondering away from worldly troubles, Tony made an appropriate action to signify his joy at that particularly vivid, and tasty memory.

"We can do you the wine." Affirmed Loki,

"And 'chips' we might be able to conjure up," Assured Thor, thinking deeply about something, that amused lip curl still standing proud. Tony grinned at Thor's words. He was looking forward to this.

Loki left to convey the order. What a short and not so sweet visit.

Turns out, he'd misinterpreted 'grilled cheese' and instead of the bread-y deliciousness he was expecting, it was just some grilled cheddar. Surprisingly though, it was still pretty damn good. Somehow they managed to perfectly replicate peppercorn sauce. How could they do that but not grilled cheese?

As well as his last supper, they'd held a little thing for him. A private matter. Just him, Thor, Loki and everyone else in Asgard. This time Tony was a bit more, shall we say.. Sociable?

He danced with a few locals, both female, male and with a few 'not sure but hot damn that's attractive.' A few farmers had turned up too, they had no idea what was going on, nor anyone else apparently but were enjoying the hot cheese bricks all the same. The more the night progressed, the more Tony realized that no one had been told that it was Tony's leaving Jam, and that everyone was just there for the hell of it. Asgard was a pretty fun place. Three major piss-ups in three weeks. The second one, however was a little smaller and only on to celebrate some religious occasion of which Tony wasn't allowed to attend. Wasn't it a bit dodgy to have a religion centered around yourself? That's taking narcissism to a whole new, freak-tastic level.

Dazed and drunk, Tony had somehow wondered off alone into the art gallery. He wasn't sure about the time, how long he'd been anywhere or why, but he was finishing off a leg of something, staring stupidly at the great works of art lining the walls. From various tapestrys to marble topiary's something took his beer scented breath away with every glance. There were pedestals and pedestals of giant crystals and perfect gold formed crowns and other adornments, each incrusted with blood red gems and soft pastel embellishments.

That's when the curtains caught fire.

He's not sure how it happened, but it definitely did. He thinks.

Tony panicked a little, trying to dab in out with his hands, but finding much to his surprise that fire was just as hot as it looked. He then looked round quickly, teeth gritted in 'whoops-ness.' He stumbled forward, flailing clumsily into a thick display stand, knocking off the expensive looking diamond-rose filled vase that smashed accusingly at his feet. He yelped a little. This situation was rapidly going south-ward. So was he, he realized as his chest hit the ground, quickly followed by his face. Thank god he was too drunk to feel pain.

He opened his eyes the next morning in his bed, woken by the brutal opening of his curtains.

He was then dressed by the same person: Saul. She was the lovely maid woman who had now seen him in a very compromising position while he was trying to do pull ups on the curtain polls while only in a towel. That day she'd told him her first name. They'd reached that point. He was dressed in a red cotton shirt, soft black leather pants, a fitted ceremonial jacket lined thinly with gold thread, and knee high brown boots. Not to mention the three, unnecessary but awesome looking belts wrapped around his waist.

For a man once so adverse to said leather and belts, he was sure starting to like them.

This was it - He's going home, bitches.

His mini, surprisingly non-hungover, celebration with an entertained Saul was interrupted when he was summoned to Odin at sun-rise.

He hadn't spent much time with the All-Father. He didn't seem like a nice guy, judging by what Tony knew about him. However, as he walked down the velvet red carpet in the throne room of which he hadn't yet seen, he sure _wanted_ to like the guy. It was pretty impressive. It just confirmed his suspicions that these guys really did know how to live. Odin stood as he approached, now holding himself up with a tinted silver cane. 'Age's catching up with him,' Tony reasoned. Sif, who stood beside him, acting as father-of-the-groom, muttered the simple instructions into his ear.

As Tony reached the edge of the cliff, he knelt to his knees, head bowed as much as his pride would allow.

"Tony Stark" Odin called, his voice heard by every single one of the six people in the room. Why was he such a secret? A man like him should be celebrated and shared everywhere. Who else can claim to be as humanly-godlike as he?

"We have enjoyed your company over the past weeks." _Bullshit, you haven't once spoken to me on your own terms. _"And you will be missed by all of us here, so as a token of your leaving, the others have ask me to bestow unto you, our Midgardian traveler, this pendant." He looked around, the others all had smug faces painted over their usually smug features.

"Thanks." He voiced, laughing at the gesture but still taking the necklace that Odin held out to him. It was hung on a thin golden chain, the red and silver glassy bead held in a sapphire crusted clasp. Nice. Tony hung it over his neck. It was heavier than the size suggested, but it was no hindrance. He soon adjusted to the extra weight.

That was all Odin wanted and Tony left, trailed by the others. He thanked them for the token. It was a little proof that when he got home he hadn't imagined the whole thing and gone insane, died or an odd, potentially impossible combination of the two.

Thoughts of home repeated in his head, perhaps making him seem a little distant, but the others all understood.

As they walked over to the famous Bifrost as one glorious team of quick built and soon to expire friends, Loki briefly thought about delaying it another day or two. After all, even he was a little cautious about what he might find the other side of the rainbow. He did have the secret intention of going with the man after all. Heimdall had previously warned him against this move though, and would not reveal why. Again, Loki was still a little cautious. This game was a tricky one. A fools hand holds no cards, for he has played them all too quickly. He must be patient.

Tony, nor the others noticed as Loki snuck the blue flower from Stark's pocket and slid it into his own, protecting its slightly disheveled look with a little magic.

They reached the end where Heimdall was waiting, straight spined and plain faced.

"No. You are not coming" Declared Tony as Loki stepped forward with him. The others stayed back, quietly waving goodbye and requesting tokens when he returned. Tony realized he probably couldn't ever come back here, and though that saddened him, home was just a few seconds away. Loki coming with him however, could put a whole new rusty spanner in the works.

"Why not?" Heimdall took his gaze slowly over to Loki, all-seeing eyes filled with something hidden. Loki usually liked to know all the variables but just this once he might have to make an exception.

"Because they'll string you up and quarter you."

"I've had worse."

"It's really not a great idea."

"Fine. Then I shall not go." Loki stepped back in submission. Tony grinned like a schoolboy, ruffling his hair which was longer than it should be after only two weeks worth of growth. He could get pepper and scissors and handcuffs, although maybe the scissors could come later.

"Well, thanks." Finished Tony, turning to everyone who'd kept him entertained during his visit. 10/10, would definitely recommend as a tourist holiday destination. He noticed Loki's position, still close enough to potentially try and trick his way in. He got the impression that that is what Loki wanted to do, so he did everything he could to avoid it. "Walk away." He instructed solely to said troublemaker. "No last minute swan dives - leave." Loki, with a bow and a silent goodbye turned on his heels, doing as Tony asked, the patient gaze of Heimdall burning on his back. The others turned and walked away with him, allowing Tony to leave in peace.

Tony stepped forward, muttering a brief goodbye to Asgard and an almighty hello to whiskey and air pollution.

Loki projected in just as the beam took off.


	13. Home and Headaches

Well he had to say, he wasn't privy to the warmest welcome.

As he landed, he had to dodge three separate projectiles as if they'd been waiting for him, and as he found out later, they had.

But for then, he realized why he was being bombarded in a shower of shells: Loki stood two or three meters away from him, eyes a little wide.

Ducking for cover, a barrage of bullets went for Loki, of course missing, but coming close enough to make him wince in second-hand anxiety. To be honest this was warning fire - if they wanted Tony dead he would be, Loki seemed to be the one they were trying to 'eliminate.'

Why the heck had that crazy fool come? Way to ruin a party.

"Stop!" He called out into the concrete town, where no obvious fire-ee stood. And as if by suspiciously well timed circumstance, it did. A loud but recognized voice boomed over again unseen speakers. What was this? Hide and go shoot to kill?

"Arms where I can see 'em!" Tony raised his hands in compliance, hissing at Loki to do the same. He did so with effort. How it must pain him to stoop so low as to surrender to an as yet unseen enemy. Yet Tony had an inkling about what might be going on.

"This isn't what it looks like, I can certainly promise you that." Tony's voice wasn't quite as convincing as it could have been.

"What the hell are you wearing, Stark?" Thanks Fury, mention Asgard's awful fashion choices at a time like this. "And nice choice for company. Down on your bellies, both of you."

"Tony," Loki whispered, still standing proud. "I can't say I fully understand."

"Long story."

"I'm waiting." Reminded Fury, furiously.

"We better comply, he hasn't had his Weetabix. He gets a little tetchy"

"I can hear you and I can light your ass up like a Christmas tree."

"Fair enough" Tony got down, his leathers making it a lot harder to manoeuvre than it should have. How the hell did he ever move in this stuff? He still hadn't perfected it after three weeks, but now every movement seemed a lot tougher. Loki sighed but copied the actions, if still braced to get back up at any moment.

"Right, good boys." The sound of squad car doors slamming and silent feet running surrounded them, closing in from out of their view.

"Now Loki, they're going to come from behind in a completely non-harassment-y way, don't fight back or you'll get a missile up your ass."

Then Tony woke up, lips covered in drool and half stuck to a bar counter, handcuffed and sore-headed.

Fury's hand clamped onto his shoulder.

"You with us?" Tony looked at him, probably looking a little medieval, dried drool and all. Tony winced as the infamous headache that he had thought gone returned. Let's just go back to Asgard, reasoned Tony pitifully.

"You know, I'm almost glad to see you. Note the almost." Tony hauled himself into a sitting position, back cracking as it straightened. Fury gave no time to even look sympathetic. Nice.

"Sorry about the men. New guys, you know?" He sat on the stool beside Tony, same long-ass leather coat round his shoulders. Did that man own any other clothes? The only truly unfortunate part of this was that those 'new guys' had duct-taped his freaking ankles together... Jesus... Not the welcome home he'd expected.

"...Yeah." Noticing Tony's disdain, Fury put his authority into action.

"Let's get those off you." So now he's playing nice guy? Strangers entered the code on the handcuffs and they unlocked with a click. They then took a Stanley to the tape, scarring the leather on his pants. He'd only now just noticed that they'd nicked his damn boots. He liked those boots. Tony cut to the questions.

"So where are we, big guy?" He looked around the room, head still spinning a little. It looked somewhat familiar but in the state of utter disorientation he was in, he was having trouble distinguishing up from down and left from right.

"Base." Fury replied simply, pouring himself a drink. Tony flexed his cramping fingers, stretching his sock hugged toes. "Want one?" Tony made a face and Fury poured a second whiskey.

"That's helpful but I was hoping for a few more specifics. Manhattan? Tokyo? Ipswich? Ibiza? Please say it's Ibiza" For once Tony had a glimmer of hope. He'd now also planned his next holiday.

"Stark Tower is our HQ now." Tony almost gagged. His baby had been through enough. He looked around the room again, the decor and rubble now seeming all too familiar.

"You what!?"

"You weren't here, Pepper gave us permission-" Oh that tiny, slightly-majorly significant detail.

"How is Pepper?" He downed his drink, the burn in his throat comforting in the way that whiskey should be. Drown those sorrows, boy, drown 'em good.

"Like hell. Can't say how she'll react to finding you back here." _Just don't think about it._

"On that rather suspicious topic, how did you know we'd be there?" Tony motioned for another but Fury didn't give. Tony poured his own damn drink, filling the glass a little more than he should have.

"We got a signal last week - readings that were a little too odd to ignore. Spikes in antimatter, micro fractures, pretty lights in the sky. That sort of thing."

"And you decided to shut down the roads and stuff it full of S.H.I.E.L.D drones?" Tony winced as the second went down in one glorious stream of liquid petrol.

"For lack of a better definition, yes. They were the same readings that Foster got at Thor's New Mexico landing. We were just covering our asses, apparently, with good reason." Tony reached for the bottle finding, only to add to his mounting concerns, that it was empty.

"Hmm..." Tony inspected the empty glass in his hand. He reminisced to the late whiskey. It was great while it lasted. He hadn't the energy to get up and grab some more so he just pushed the glass away and refocused on Pop-eye.

"So," Fury cleared his throat, placing an arm on the bar. "Looking good in leather."

"Ditto." Tony said little else except some partly heard remarks.

"So, red and gold, that your thing?"

"A long with a number of other things. I'm an eagle." He whispered that last line as if it were a secret. Truth be told, he thinks that whiskey had affected him a little. What was it with him and his newly demolished alcohol resistance? He'd spent years building that wall, was it now all for naught.

"Yep -" Fury stood up. "He's him guys, stand down." Oh yeah, this would have been a test wouldn't it.

"Here I thought we were bonding" Tony looked almost upset, but to be honest he just looked a little drunk.

"Seriously, get changed." Fury wiped away the non-existent dust on his thighs, eyes furrowed in a deep something. "Protocol mandates that all S.H.I.E.L.D Senior members wear the uniform while on base." Tony almost fell off his stool in laughter. They were trying to put him, _Tony Stark: Playboy, billionaire philanthropist,_ in a uniform. This wasn't retail.

"Try it."

"I thought you'd say that. So, let the coercion and blackmailing begin." Tony looked to the crumbled, smoke stained ceiling in a silent, muttering a hopeless prayer. He slipped off the stool taking a coaster with him. Since when did he have a coaster? Anyway...

"Fine." He trudged off heavy footed to the bathroom, or where it used to be, only to be handed a packaged outfit and directions to where the toilet is now. If they hurt his tower in anyway, god help them, their children, and their grandchildren. He past many agents and stray mice on his twenty yard walk to the new toilet and he had to say he was impressed. They'd turned his back-up boiler room into a toilet, mirror, shower and all. What, pray tell, was wrong with the other, he wondered.

Before he did anything, he went for a piss. God he had missed porcelain on those cheeks. He won't go into details, but Asgardian toilets aren't as advanced as they ought to be. He hadn't even seen anyone bar him use the little boy's room. Maybe it's one of those 'just you human' things, as Fandral used to say whenever Tony didn't conform to near god perfection, which was rare.

Then Tony searched in his pockets, not finding what his fingers searched for.

_Damn, where's that flower gone?_

He spent about a minute searching before reluctantly giving in and realizing he must have left it in the room. He carried on changing, a little further down of heart. He'd get pepper a hundred flowers and a million diamond rings if she wanted, but that flower was going to be something special - No one else in the world would have one. Yes, he knew she already had a gazillion 'one of a kinds' but that one was alien and new and beautiful. He didn't know, he just wanted things resolved and that vision of home and handcuffs to be realized.

What was wrong with arriving nice and simply in his own time without the one man he really shouldn't have. His day started amazingly, but now was turning into something of a hell hole. Still he smiled at himself in the mirror. He had a new slight bruise over his left eyebrow and a thin tarmac graze on his cheek but apart from that he looked the same as usual. For some odd reason he'd expected himself to look different, deformed, because that's how he felt. Everything felt heavier and smelt disgusting and everything was too quiet and he strained to hear. The differences in gravitational energies and atmospheric pressures, the scientific part of him analysed. Damn freaking' magic his new slightly half-Asgardian side uttered.

Once Tony was changed into that ridiculously close fitting outfit they dared call mandatory, he was greeted once again by Fury and his crime-fighting gangster squad. He pulled absently at his crotch, trying to get a little bit of freedom in this wet suit. Then they walked out the tower and silently roamed, somewhat aimlessly down the street together. Double checking behind him, the Tower looked alright, if not for the lack of a few letters on 'A' tower and a few boarded up levels here there and everywhere else.

They stopped by a street memorial. A simple collection of dying and freshly cut flowers, some dyed blue, some naturally yellow, and some a hideous shade somewhere in between. He looked for his face, which wasn't there.

"Not even a bench?"

"We didn't tell the general public you were dead." How considerate...

"Why not?" Tony shifted through the letters and fallen petals that strew the floor. He didn't read them he just took in the sheer number. Fury crouched down beside him, matching their heights.

"A. We didn't have a body to show them B. You obviously weren't."

"But you didn't know that." Tony picked up a stray dark leaf, twiddling it between his fingers. He dropped it once it split.

"We weren't going to tell them that their shining light and saviour was dead, were we Stark. Or would you have them completely destroyed?" Touché. That would be pretty tough, considering how their homes had been destroyed and that really good Chinese shop still had half a bus sticking out of its doorway that spread across the whole of three previously separate shops. They obviously hadn't cleared this area yet.

"How long?" Tony took another long air full of musky, off air, just making sure he was ready for upcoming the response.

"Three weeks." He hadn't had enough whiskey.

"Three weeks?! That son of a bitch." And he said he was the best at time travel. Ace work there, nut-job. "And how comes you haven't tidied it all yet in three weeks?"

"They're still investigating it." Fury re-positioned one bunch of flowers, then chose to relight one of the candles with the lighter tied to the post. A free for all lighter? An arsonists dream.

"For what?" Tony pushed, looking back to the war torn set of New York.

"For anything that asshole Loki might have left behind, or anyone else for that matter. The residents have been relocated and compensated." Fury seemed to have something else to add, but wasn't saying. Tony let it go. He didn't want to know. Not his problem. He'd done the world enough favours for today. Fury pointed to a picture, clearing his throat.

"Twelve years old. A mother lost her husband and her child to that monster." He pointed to another. "Grandpa Joey and Grandma Josie, Two lovely old people, married seventy years. Their grandchildren and children came to the service last Sunday to pay respects. Made cookies for everyone, like they would've done." He pointed to yet another. "Mariah Collins. 18, just stated college, she was promising; string of As, good kid-"

"That's enough." Fury laughed, Tony's frown only deepening.

"So why the hell Stark do I find you hoping back to earth with your ass tailing that ass-wipe." Oh, of course they thought... ah... He should have thought about that...

"That's not the Loki you want, believe me. He's just-"

"Oh really, because Loki escaped from Asgard's top security cell just last week, stole back his sceptre and with the help of an un-known companion and made off free as the wind. I was really hoping it wasn't actually you that turned up at our door 'cause I didn't what to have to do your ass." Tony didn't see but had a sneaky suspicion that those boots clicking on the ground behind him were agents, not rabid fan girls as he would usually find if he spent any amount of time out in the open, slightly smelly, air.

"Loki's escaped and S.H.I.E.L.D's sitting down waiting for stray transmissions? Listen to me, you let Loki go from wherever you've got him because you're jumping to conclusions that I didn't even know existed. Whoever that unknown companion is you better hurry up and find him because it sure as hell ain't me. I just got back so I don't appreciate being accused straight away." He wiped his clean lips, calming down, "Well, at least you brought me a drink first."

"So where have you been for three weeks?" Oh, well he couldn't just say Asgard could he? "Why the pause, Big Man?"

"Somewhere else - Look, he's innocent. Where is he?" Fury just stared. "Oh come on."

"Where have you been?"

"Asgard." Fury's face was delicious. "Other Asgard - that portal thingy took me to another dimension, and so _that_ Loki is innocent and I'd prefer if you didn't torture another poor sod and turn him insane as well. I'd be worried about the one who has actually escaped and running around care free."

"You expect me to believe that?" Humans infuriated him.

"No, but I was hoping you would because that's where I've been and I don't want to lie at a time like this." Tony was just about to kick something. "Look, how do you want me to prove it-?"

Luck's a pretty dodgy thing. You can get bad luck and good luck and luck with questionable motives. You can get karma and Mojo and a bitch slap of fate round the face but whatever this was, it was wholly less describable.

The high-security van that he hadn't before noticed, where his Loki was apparently seated, went up in flames. Would this help or hinder his chances at present? The agents around them scattered, protocols and training running in their brains. Tony just, completely on instinct, looked up. A second, slightly ill looking Loki standing proud, a shroud of red mist circling his feet - really clashing with his motto green.

Fury was calling up the initiative as Tony ran towards the van. The burnt door swung open, Loki limping off the van step onto the tarmac, coughing like a 40-a day drunkard.

"What hospitality your species has" He commented, Tony putting an arm around his shoulder. The magic restricting metal bindings -most likely of Asgardian origins - were still on his wrists, but now decided to suddenly unlock. What luck.

"To me that looked like a pretty warm welcome," A dead and mangled agent landed at their feet, along with rubble and burning debris. "but come on, I need a suit - I'm nothing without my can."

"I'll stay here and help out-" Tony moved that statement up in the 'worst idea of the day' rankings.

"No bad idea, not at all advised. They'll mistake you - they're trying to deal with one Loki, don't give 'em another. Just leave - go home and don't look back."

"No."

"Asgard, now! I never asked for you, leave." Loki stood his ground on recovering feet. Tony yelled out in a burst of everything. They both ran back towards Stark tower seeking shelter, Loki soon regaining his strength and pushing away Tony's arms, increasing his speed and overtaking him.

If Loki was going to stay, Tony decided, he was going to either be a great help or an annoyingly large and slimy hindrance.

Bring it on.


	14. Pipes and pre-traumatic stress

*Authors note*  
I have re-written this little shite of a chapter. I didn't like it when I originally wrote it and I'm still not 100% with it but I really want to get going with the second step of the plot sooo... I apologize. Not much of the plot has changed, it's just less 'Oh I'm Loki, let me just get real emotional all of a sudden' and more 'Oh shit, my name's Tony and I'm about to die.' Okay, I'll shut up now.  
*End*

On running in, with all the swarming confusion and sudden dead people, Loki and he were somehow separated. Tony, stopped in what used to be the reception area, cried out a little, the whole situation just wholly uncalled for and not playing fair. He spun on his heels looking one last futile time for a specific sorcerer. No, Loki had definitely done a disappearing act _that pea-brained - Ugh. _The lack of flashing lights and agents in their base only now worried him as he stood in empty halls. Back up would really make him feel a lot safer. But as there was none to be seen he went for the second best thing and the one non-breathing person he'd missed during his little vacation. But just to add to Tony's despair, he couldn't run down to get his suit, finding instead that the door leading downwards had been boarded up and was now going to be of no use to anyone. _Oh great, just what I needed._ So wanting to be of little help, though not really, he ran back out, re-joining the orange that seemed way too familiar to be comfortable.

Hearing screams that he knew should not have been there he ran into another building. A bank? The screaming was upstairs, and more likely than not, a trap. Still, he had a few lingering morals. Whether by whiskey influenced means, or just because he'd given up on things being safe and predictable, Tony followed the blatantly bogus cries for help.

_Oh, Jesus you trickable little-_

"Hey, Severus." Loki was faced away from him, but not his Loki. His Loki wasn't causing multiple explosions outside, at least hopefully not.

"Tony..."

"You got me." Tony looked round the office. It was a smart move for Loki to bring him up here. It was dark and still in a mess from Loki's last little toss up. There are no possible weapons, no escape route except via a window or down the stairs that Loki could very easily barricade.

"It wasn't tremendously hard."

"That's nice. It was of course lovely chatting but can I leave now?"

It wasn't fear in Tony stomach, not pure fear like he'd felt facing the man before. It was more a mix of anger and apprehension. Would he be attacked now or later? Would his very probable death be quick, slow or somewhere between. Why the hell did he come here? Some little part of him was saying that he wanted to meet the god, wanted to brutally re-affirm the 'HE'S A PHYSCO' mentality. But Tony was telling himself that that was the drunk part of his brain and was under no circumstances to be trusted or listened to.

"No." Okay, there was a bit more fear on Tony's part.

"Do I need a lawyer?"

"I need you out of the way." Was this going to be the whole Scooby-Doo thing of reveal the plan before you execute it? Or execute him... Neither were preferable to be honest. Though in truth, he was touched that Loki saw him as a threat. It really was heartwarming.

"Murder usually does the trick there." Was Tony really advertising his own death?_ Seriously, man?_

"You are being watched."

"That's... damn..." He couldn't find the word... Creepy? Unsettling? Damn near arousing?

"If I touch you, he will know." Tony wasn't laughing like a five year old, honest. He decided that making crude remarks at a time like this probably wasn't one of his greatest ideas so he stuck to demeaning the god instead.

"And you scared of yourself?" Loki made a noise close to a grunt, still not diverting his eyes from the rapidly decaying view.

"Of course not." Tony shifted his weight to the other foot. Now the worry was getting to him, making him a little jittery. The exit was just a few meters away, could he make a run for it?

"So then why?" He weighed up his options... No, staying here was better. At least act cooperative, that tends to get you the juicy gossip. Loki didn't answer for a few seconds, and before Tony could ask why, Loki laughed.

"How is life, Tony Stark?" Tony took a moment to consider this.

"Brief, fleeting, bit terrifying between. Better with alcohol." Loki still faced the window, hand still casting various spells, presumably. "What about you. How's prison break going?" Tony laughed a little, mainly through quickly manifesting fear but still. Loki's fists stopped casting to ball at his sides. "Oh, I hit a nerve?"

"It is going well."

"So what happened over there? Long chains and longer whips? You know for some people, that's heaven."

"They caged me like a dog. Do you know how boring it is in a box? Seeing the world go by but kept from it by fools."

"What else?"

"I need not bore you with the details."

"But why else did you pull such an amazing rowdy toddler routine? Why all the flashy lights, not just little sparklers?"

"Need someone have a reason for grandiosity? For elegance?"

"Generally... no, but you're not a case to be filed under 'general.'"

"You think I'm going to spill all my problems and perhaps cry? Will you hug me and kiss me and make me feel better? You are a fool. I am Loki - I do what I want. I need no ones pardon."

"You want to be hated?" That made sense, a lot of sense, but he was just trying to make conversation. Even if it wasn't going to delay the oncoming slaughter, he didn't want to go cloud singing while bored. He'd chat until he died and then find some science-y way to come back and haunt that bastard from the grave.

"Even you have wanted to rule worlds." _Don't compare yourself to me._ "Do you not wish for shining lights and worshipers wherever you walk?" Loki locked their eyes in combat. Tony daren't blink, Loki didn't need to. It was suspiciously soft eyes on scared eyes. Which would win this round?

"I think you're just overcompensating for something, personally. I mean I have parades and all but _they_ come to _me_. At heart you're just and attention seeking whore." Tony took this opportunity to make the god feel a little shitty while it presented itself. "You get played a few dodgy cards and suddenly the universe should bend over the counter for you. I mean that's hardly humble."**  
**

"Do not talk like you understand-"

"But I kinda do. While we're making parallels to each other, me and you unfortunately share some common denominators. You hate your dad, I hate my dad. You wear weird shit on your head... No wait, that's just you. But what I'm saying is you were moderately happy before you happened across a little buried taboo. I mean I have a witness who can reliably certify that you weren't always an insane and self-destructive super-villain. I mean, I think you're reliable. You are definatly quite cool to hang around with when you're not, you know, trying to kill everyone."

"Are you finished with the bonding time-" The visible cogs turning in Loki's head jammed to a sudden halt. Loki's eyes, that had hardened during Tony's little speech-ette, relaxed, making Tony just that little bit more nervous. "You spoke with me, before I..." Loki looked away. "Discovered the lie?"

"Long story short, yeah."

"You did not tell me?"

"No."

"Then perhaps, Tony Stark..." Loki smiled, looking a little ill around the gills. Blue spread through his veins, engulfing his skin in the same deep colour. As it touched his eyes, they morphed into a delicious red: His lips paling and mixing in with his new colour scheme. "Someone should." Was it wrong that he was getting a little distracted by the blue - he had wondered what it had looked like. He was pulled from his admiration however when Loki started walking towards him. Tony braced but needed not to as Loki passed him, heading for the stairs he had originally come up. Tony had to stop him, somehow.

"Laufeyson." Loki turned in his tracks, almost with a hiss.

"Stark." That little tingle in every fibre of Tony's heart was begging to just be crippled.

He couldn't let other Loki find out who he is the hard way. After all they were buds - amigos - courtesans... or is that a cheese? Weren't they? It's not the decent thing to do. Decent...

How insane was it on a scale from none-to-'holy shit what are you doing' would it be to provoke the God of Mischief? Aw hell, why not?

"How's mother?" Judging by the darkening of Loki's blood red eyes, he knew he had him. "How is she knowing what you did?" He remembered back to Thor's various conversations about how his mother was handling the whole thing, and also remembered back to the party two weeks ago when she and Loki never kept their eyes off each other. Bringing up Odin would just make him angry, Thor would just make him laugh but Frigga? That would touch his widdlle-soully-woully. What he had left of one, anyway.

"Silence!" Oh god he felt like an asshole. Even more so than usual, but if this Loki was so distracted with beating him up, he couldn't be spilling his little secret could he? Perfect, masochistic logic.

"How's she sleeping at night? She visit you? She mourn you?"

Tony found himself hoisted by the collar and pushed into the nearest hard surface, which just happened to be a rather un-sturdy window. He felt the glass crack against his back. At least the explosions outside stopped for a moment.

"Shut your putrid mouth, you half-breed." Tony was very almost near somewhere close to mildly offended. When Tony laughed, again purely out of fear, Loki hit him. Tony doesn't think he's ever been in so much pain. He spat the blood from his mouth to the side. His head started spinning a little. His cheek bone had just been shattered. Yay. Tony spoke through bloodied, numbed teeth.

"Aw - do it again." Loki looked rather off put in his skin of blue and red and lines of white. "And, if it helps, that blues kind of a turn on." Apparently it didn't help however, as the glass shattered and Tony found himself hurtled out of the window. Okay, maybe he went a bit too far. Thankfully, pale skinned Loki caught him at the bottom. Thank god for magic blankies. Tony took the hand that offered itself, while also looking up to the window, where a very blue Loki still stood, gazing down on them. White Loki was only looking at Tony, luckily. Tony decided his head hurt, but not his cheek surprisingly. He'd just made it personal with The Great Mischievous One. Well he didn't really have time to decide anything else before frosty Loki appeared smack bang behind pasty Loki. "Hey," Tony panicked. "Shut your eyes." His previous escape brought him no time, and so was completely useless and really should not have been done. He panicked.

"Why-"

"Shut!" Loki did as Loki laughed.

"Hello." Good?Loki seemed a little startled by the introduction to his other self, but still did not open his eyes.

"Hello." He responded, not turning.

"Mr Stark is a very clever man."

"Undoubtedly."

"And annoying."

"Just as."

"Hey!" Tony didn't like this budding friendship, especially when they were bonding over insulting him.

"Cannot I see myself face to face? Must your eyes be closed?" Loki and his little sly tongue. His tongue had much better uses than helping him to be an annoying prat.

"Apparently." At least Loki was obedient. Something he hadn't expected but was grateful for none-the-less.

"Listen, do not open your eyes." Tony urged him, squeezing the still held hand that he had originally offered.

"What will I see?"

"Something oddly awesome, but something I don't think your quite ready for." Right, this was going swimmingly. Two Loki's, oh the ideas. Focus. It wasn't his fault he got amorous when he was scared.

* * *

So Loki teleported himself away following Tony's orders. He gazed down into a nearby puddle, the reflection of his own dark green eyes staring back. He stood on the roof edge, the strong afternoon wind whipping up his cape, raking relentlessly through his hair. His fists clenched at his side. The bond between himself and the technically unknown assailant, who he now had suspicions about was still strong. He was having trouble disobeying the thoughts in his scrambled mind. He had practiced against these thoughts, he would be fine.

Then Loki sat, feet dangling off the edge of the brown, rain soaked tower. He gazed over the landscape taking in the unnatural craters and scorched stone. His view for miles was simply grey with darker overtones. The sun was dimly average, the weather cold and windy but not raining as it evidently was earlier.

This was a lot different from his last visit.

There were no mud lanes and no farmer tended horses. Hardly an improvement.

He was doing as Tony asked, for now. He would not look but curiosity clawed at him like razors. He would have to wait until they were both alone. He needed Stark to trust him, he would not if Loki was not doing as he asked.

Was he deformed? Was that it? What could he not see?

But as he sat, signal blocking barrier wrapped tightly around him, he hummed. Now he had to re-form all his plans again. Never had something this tedious come to his attention. He didn't mind, it was fun. There's only so much joy you can take out of spoiling parties and breaking into 'impenetrable' vaults. He could hear the arrival of more Midgardian soldiers. He could see a few, coming into the place he was not allowed to see. He had kept tags on Tony. The normal: heart rate, temperature, adrenaline levels. Every moment that he sat there Tony was terrified. His heart beat frantically and there was so much adrenaline in the man that his legs must be near shaking. When he felt his Tony's pain, after a short break in which he knew Tony wouldn't be injured further, he went down.

* * *

Loki still stood, facing Tony with venom in his eyes.

Wanting nothing but to wither away into his shell, his yellowed stalk craving oxygen, he allowed himself to become angry. So close - So close to freedom but this little ant came to stop him. Came to carry his parts away to store for winter, along with the rest of his infantile nest. There he stood behind himself, a former, weaker version of everything he used to be. He pitied it, pitied his blissful ignorance, and loathed the way it had no idea of what it was. And there also stood Stark, facing him like he wasn't afraid. That utter fool. He was protecting a brutal, savage beast from an inevitable truth.

"Hey, do me a favour, go somewhere else other you won't find you."

Before he could catch this other Loki, he was gone. In a reflex burst of anger, he pushed the mortal to the ground, the hilt of his staff knocking the ever precious air from his lungs. But instead of that sweet fear in his prey's eyes that he was so used to seeing, he saw confusion. He'd never seen that before, well not for very long before their heart ceased bringing life into their useless carcasses.

He now had no time for fear. He would kill this Stark and that walking parasite. Let the watchers come - let them try and do what they promised. Let them try.

Then Tony came in, realization on his face.

"Hey, do me a favour, just switch back a moment." He clarified, "Into ivory you."

"Why would I do anything for you, when you have been nothing to me but a wall. One I plan to demolish."

"Wait-" Ahh yes, fear. It was intoxicating. "Just for as second, come on." Stark shrugged. "I mean you're not very threatening like that are you?" Loki felt his skin warm, his senses diminished only slightly. Great power burst from his veins, proving undoubtedly that Asgardians have a greater capacity for the arts of sorcery.

This form scratched at him. But it also suited him. Like this he was just one big lie. He laughed.

"Better?"

"Your eyes are blue..." Was that the most important thing to focus on right now? It was hardly necessary when he was about to be torn limb from limb.

"So?" He crouched down in front of the still panting man, flicking away that piece of chalky dust that had nested on Stark's shoulder. He wanted his trophy to look nice. Where would he hang him? How would the world react when Loki showed off his latest kill?

"Your eyes are green." A sharp and ugly feeling hit him, but something in his head pushed it back. _Not important_, it chanted and Loki listened to it's lovely voice. The tesseract's lovely voice.**  
**

"Hardly an important fact but a gold star for effort." Loki drew the green jewel encrusted dagger from his belt and ran his finger tip along the edge. The drop of red blood running down in random lines proving its sharpness. "I think you are worthy of the frost blade, no?" Loki relished the hitch in Tony's breath, the wild look in his eyes, the darting from blade to face. But Tony managed to pull himself away from that.

"Your under its power..." Loki's mind recoiled and burnt for no good reason, but that wouldn't stop him getting the task done. "Don't you want to get out?" Reasoning with your own murderer, perhaps he's not as smart as expected. Loki positioned himself over the quivering livestock, hand holding down it's shoulder, making any movement impossible.

"I hope you find peace, Stark." He raised his dagger, Tony watching the sun glint off it's perfectly polished edges, but it never reached its target before Loki himself fell into darkness.

* * *

"Thank god your parents got horny. You are a god... Well, not literally." Hawkeye helped him up, Tony wincing as the slice on his leg opened wider. Must have nicked him on the way to unconsciousness. Joy. Clint threw away the pipe he used to assault Loki.

"Let's just hope it works this time." Clint kicked away the dagger, removing it from Loki's reach if he woke up.

"What works?" Tony pushed a finger into the swelling on his cheek. Clint ignored his infantile behavior as he started screaming a little. Tony found that it only didn't hurt if he didn't touch it, if he did, let's just say it wasn't the most pleasant experience in his life.

"Sorry, heard you talking. Hard things over the head knock the tesseract's power out of you, well at least it did for me."

"You better prey it does, otherwise I'm pushing you in the way of his little tantrum when he wakes up." Let's just say Clint looked a little worried when Loki appeared in front of him, smiling and taking Tony off him without resistance. Barton looked back, other Loki still splayed on the floor.

"Oh yeah, don't mind him. Don't say a word." Clint just nodded, prepping another arrow, not sure who to aim it at.

"I would introduce myself, but I believe we already know each other." Clint just nodded, face shifting into something close to disgust. He obviously didn't approve of their honest proximity. Being on the same planet would be too close for Clint.

"Listen, if he starts waking up, let us know and get out. Clint, can you bind him?"

"What'll hold him?" Tony didn't actually know.

"It almost pains me to do this to myself but," A golden chain draped itself over Loki's hand. He handed it to Clint, who watched him closely, packing the arrow away. "It will hurt him." Clint did it without remorse. "Oh and Stark," He spoke into his ears, so only he could hear. "I do not mind your control over me, but I am not your puppet." Once upon a time that would've been scary.

"No, no," Tony sniffed "I respect that." Tony felt a little spark travel down his spine, one which then immigrated all over. It was a weird sensation, like he was being tickled with a thousand feathers that just so happened to have little needles on their heads. It wasn't painful, just odd. He looked to conscious Loki, raising an eyebrow.

"You cannot fight a war with one leg, although, I do look rather peaceful. I take it I can look now?" Loki laughed, pushing Tony's weight off of him when his support was no longer required. Tony was joyed at the no longer mangled face and wound free thigh. Being friends with the almost-enemy had some perks, it seemed.

"I should have shot him in the head." Clint linked the last two chains together and watched as they joined. "Much less effort." Loki looked at Clint, a warning glint in his eyes. "You don't know Him." Clint protested, still really unhappy with the situation.

"Boys..." Tony intervened. "How's he doing?"

"He is weaker, but still stronger than your archer, just in case he tries anything." Loki glared at Clint, Clint glared back.

Tony tried to level the testosterone. "You know, I wouldn't object to a slip of Hawks grip on an arrow in his general direction."

"Am I really so horrid?"

"Look around you - you did all this." It was obvious that this Clint didn't like him, not that he cared. The feeling was mutual.

"_He _did this." He motioned to the twitching narcoleptic. Making sure the distinction was made he then expressed he views on the view. "I am impressed," Clint however wasn't and so huffed, "I could fix this up in a second, if you would like?"

"And all the lives lost?" Continued Tony, taking a moment to feel the pain packed down in the bottom of his chest a long with every other negative of the situation. This whole thing was giving him indigestion. Beside him Clint's scepticism was dripping, yet he said not a word about it. Tony did what Tony wanted, he knew that well enough by now.

"Unfortunately not. I suppose he is guilty of that. An innocent life lost is never worth anything."

"Oh, the great one has morals." Loki didn't honor Clint with a direct response, more a stiffening of the shoulders. Loki turned to Tony, jaw clenched.

"Please tell your friend to watch his tongue. I am not that man there-" Loki disappeared just as the one on the floor moaned.

"Whoever did that will- How on..." He tried to pull apart his chained wrists. Long story short he couldn't. During Loki's stunned silence, Clint turned to Tony and in a very stern voice said...

"Welcome back, Stark."


	15. Stricher

***Author's note***

There's a few German lines in here that I may or may not have lost the translations to... *innocent whistling* I'll go search for them and put them up in a bit :D

***End***

Loki was still sat on the ground, shouting death threats and insults without showing any signs of stopping. Clint was just ignoring them, Tony was answering back.

It was only when Loki and Tony really started getting into it that Clint's smooth facade shattered.

"Oh for the love of- Fury!" He yelled into his earpiece which he had taken out of his ear in frustration. "How long are you guys going to be?"

"You're going to have to hold out a little longer, Loki went outside the Red Zone. Media is a bitch. What's the situation your end?" Clint's grunt into the radio gave Fury all the information he needed, and also the muffled distant insults. No one was dying, yet. "Well, get to a secure place and keep Loki contained. You good?"

"We'll be at Stark Tower."

"Got it." Barton put the earpiece back where it belonged, calming down a little. Tony and Loki had stopped quarreling but were now locked in something of a staring contest. Tony was sniggering as Loki was looking just about ready to break his bonds and rip the lungs from out his chest.

"Hey Tony, leave the dog alone. We're going back to your tower, getting out of the streets. You got any hidden good defenses that SHIELD haven't found?" Tony, with one final tongue poked in the God's general direction ended their little one sided death match. He stood from where he had gone eye level with Loki, feeling his knees crack a little. He sniffed, looking back towards his tower.

"As in Loki type defenses, no. Unless your little group have added anything major?" The wind moving around all these shells of buildings started picking up.

"No, the main floors are just for show. Nothing works except the air con and the Sky+." Tony approved.

"I'm sure the other Loki will appear magically to our aid if such a man as himself does manage to escape." He said it to the open air, hoping a certain, still hidden mischief maker would hear him. Then Clint was on his radio, mumbling some stuff about rendezvousing shortly and about expecting something weird, or rather some colorful variations of that word. Tony tried to hoist a rather put out Loki onto his feet but apparently he weighed quite a bit. A suddenly appearing second Loki took over with a laugh. Hands under his own arms he dragged a bound and unhappy criminal along the road, the leather doing it's job and merely scratching itself on the tarmac. Loki excused his showing up by explaining how they were never going to move him with out Asgardian strength if he did not want to be moved. So, accepting that they now had to contend with two Loki's, Tony and Clint trailed behind said duo.

Tony took this time as he passed through the entrance to realize that his tower really was ruined. Every light was flickering, if they were even on at all. The whole place was just a collection of broken furniture, destroyed walls and the staircase nothing more than a collection of wood splinters, metal shards and glass shrapnel. He wasn't even going to talk about his poor, poor elevator and it's half a swinging door. Tony couldn't take them to his lab and even if he could he wouldn't have, bearing in mind the kind of stuff he hoped he still had down there that he didn't want any Loki getting their hands on. So instead, Odinson took them one by one, up to one of the more stable floors - an office floor, no less. It was split into three parts, each separated by a door and a shuttered viewing panel. Power was off and every external window shattered. The breeze was a bit loud and admittedly more of a hurricane but thanks to a certain thing called magic, Loki dealt with that pretty sharpish.

Tony looked over to his Loki who was staring at his counterpart, something different in his eyes. How the hell was he going to deal with this? Two freakin' potential mass murderers in the same freakin' room.

He sighed.

Once they arrived, and nested quite comfortably, Clint had the smart and headache-saving idea of gagging that poor excuse of an organism.

Using a belt buckle from Loki's own attire, they strapped it into his mouth. He bit down on it angrily, the looks he gave Tony making the recipient shiver a little.

The belt motif didn't do anything great for Loki's luscious looks. It made his black hair stick out at odd angles and pressed into the thin skin covering his cheekbones, but it kept anything coming out that sweet, plump mouth of his other than a few disgruntled moans. An improvement, to say the least.

Loki then dragged their POW into the furthest room, before moving back one. Tony and Clint stayed in the first room by the stairwell, waiting to yell down their location to anyone that happened to ask.

It wasn't long, say half an hour of tense silence before the rest of the Avengers walked into their makeshift cell block. They were rather late to the party.

Tony hugged them each and individually as the three of them wondered in, a little shocked at the sight they were greeted with. Of course Fury just pushed him away, muttering something about having a gun and being willing to shoot. Some people are just natural born humbugs. He spun Nat, taking in her coconutty, sweaty scent with glee. They weren't exactly drinking buddies, but she was cool. Steve shook his hand and slapped his shoulder, which really hurt, expressing his joy that he wasn't really dead and that in a way he'd always known he wasn't. Tony was touched. It was then Steve's turn for the hug and luckily the 70+ world war soldier didn't seem to mind too much.

He noted the lack of any more Avengers making their way into this humble abode. It seemed to be more of a book club now rather than a boy band. He liked to think of Steve as the founder, Nat the scary mom that's standing behind Clint as he reads furiously and then he's there, comic hidden over the pages of Romeo and Juliet. Fury of course would be the creepy man in the corner who no one knows nor asks for yet is there anyway, every Saturday, sharp.

"So what happened?" Asked Steve getting down to business, still grinning but his arms crossed. They were glad he was back but obviously warned about this scenario. Tony was acting on blind faith that they would believe him here.

"Me and three Chitauri mother ships landed on him," He motioned to still standing Laufeyson and continued. "he took me home and we fondued." Steve didn't seem to get the quite frankly hilarious gag.

"But what happened?"

"I got drunk a number of times and set curtains on fire." Tony looked around for the two faces he had not yet seen and yet the ones he most wanted to right now.

"I see."

"It's a pretty fun place. Where is Thor anyway?" He was greeted, not with a response as he would've very mush appreciated, but by Fury coming suddenly to life.

"That doesn't matter - what does is why you have Loki watching your back."

"Hey, no, we've had this conversation." He pointed an accusing finger at Fury who had, rather rudely he might add, interrupted their conversation.

"Not to me." Added Steve, wanting to know what Tony really didn't want to tell. So, not really wanting to start having everyone biting his butt, Tony made a run for it. He needed to clear his head.

"Anyway, sorry , gotta dash - have to keep someone from doing a boo-boo." Tony didn't turn at their calls nor did he allow himself to be pulled back at their grasps. He shut the door on them as they tried to follow him out into the temporary cell room. They didn't follow him there. It was a twisted time when Tony found comfort in Loki.

"Humans." He mocked, standing next to Loki who peered with him at the de-magicked version of himself, a version who was sulking sourly behind the glass of the office window.

"I sense they didn't take your arrival too well."

"No thanks to you, Yoda."

"I didn't know."

"No, you didn't. So will you go now?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it's worth me asking." Tony looked up into Loki's face, who was not looking back, rather at the poorer version of himself. Tony knew he must be wondering, he knew it was only a matter of time before this Loki knew the big bad truth and everything around him really started going to the dogs. "Can't go get your brother for me can you?"

"Afraid not."

"Can't take me back again? You know, to Asgard." He was joking, but that idea was a little appealing, he wasn't going to lie to himself about that.

"And allow you to ignore your own life?"

"There isn't a chance I can go back in time again, to before I showed up? Start this whole, slightly moldy mess again? Like in the video games." Loki dismissed his jest and answered honestly.

"I haven't the power; we would need the bifrost and then what would happen to this sequence of events? You must live with what you made."

"I didn't make this. I asked to go back to just after I landed. Not my fault you can't handle simple instructions."

"You did not give me dates."

"You didn't ask for them."

"Then we are both to blame, aren't we."

"And there is no other dimension exactly like this one? I can't just leave this one to rot?"

"I can take you to another but there will be some slight difference."

"What kind?"

"Mainly large historical events."

"So I'll be singing bad German loves songs in the shower, then parading round in black shirts declaring my blatant love for camping?"

"In one set of events, yes." Tony huffed amusedly at this new information. Imagining himself, or anyone else in this building in lederhosen and wielding funny mustachios was quickly becoming his favorite past time. "I believe you would fit in well." Tony choked, disgusted that Loki would even-

"Du Hurensohn!" He gasped, crossing his arms determinedly. Shorts was one of the few things he couldn't, and had no intention, of pulling off.

"Hirnlose Ochse." Taking it as a challenge Tony took it up a step.

"Die Fregatt." Loki wasn't about to let the fool win.

"Dein Hund soll deinen Vater ficken." Tony clapped at the insult but took his turn.

"Dreckige Hure."

"No, now that I am."

* * *

Steve slipped away over to where Fury stood, eye looking through the perspex to where a Tony and two Loki's stood, Two Loki's who he was supposed to believe unconnected and one not even hostile.

"You want to take him to actual base?" Steve questioned, arms still crossed. He peered at the pair, troubled.

"We have to take the green ones there and I don't think we'll be able to separate them. Whatever they've got going on, its pretty tight and pretty planned."

"I don't like that idea."

"Is there any part of this you do like?"

"No."

"So lets get them all locked up." They both stood in a silence filled with contemplation. "What are they doing at the moment?" Fury asked the tech team monitoring them over hidden cameras. When the voice replied, the speaker was obviously entertained.

"I think, sir," A stifled chuckle came from the background. "they are swearing at each other in German."

"Jesus," Fury muttered angrily under his breath. He turned, Steve turning with him. "get me a drink!"

Fury walked off to get his frustration reliever while Steve returned to his position as watcher. He decided to call Tony back. They needed to get going as soon as possible.

* * *

Tony looked back as a knock came at the window. Tony moaned, not being as happy to be back with the Avengers as he thought he would. He reasoned that this is because of all the sideways glances and suspicions that he knew were completely justified, but not at all appreciated.

"Come with me," Commanded Tony to Loki who was still entertained by their previous fight. "I'm not leaving you alone with him." Loki smirked with moist, light lips.

"Why not?"

"Stop acting dumb - come." Walking back through the door, Loki only a second or two behind, Steve took him by the shoulder and moved him to a corner, lowering his voice.

"Tony, we've got to get him to the base into a more secure cell." Tony bit his cheek.

"Couldn't agree more but I thought this was the base?"

"It's the fake base." Tony just gave him a raised eyebrow so Steve continued to elaborate. "Stark Tower is the target if something else ever happened, like just did." Oh great, now they're lying to him? Again, their actions were completely within reason but they still pissed him off. He almost died for those ass-clowns.

"So where is this new base?" They walked back into the main cluster of movement, Tony eying the agents that went in to deal with their resident wacko.

"About ten miles away."

"...Right." _That really takes you away from the disaster zone, you still being in it and all. _Steve saw Tony's face and explained himself.

"We needed to stay close. We found this War bunker, it's been out of use for decades until now." It's ironic that they found the bunker _after_ the war had 'finished.' Tony took time to comment on the current happenings.

"WW3 isn't turning out the way I expected it."

Within ten minutes tops, the tower's inhabitants were emptied into the convoy of mysterious black S.H.I.E.L.D vans, the whole process running like a military operation, which technically, it was.

All the Avengers were in different vans.

Loki, both of them for security's sake, were handcuffed if they weren't already, blindfolded and stuffed into the back of a mobile high security prison, too pimped up with Asgards finest sorcery wards and warmed seats, thankfully.

Tony went in the last van, only as he was the last to leave the building. He'd missed his faithful abode. _Fair well young warrior, you fought bravely._

Once they stopped after their laughably short voyage, they were split into teams, loud orders being yelled over loud speakers as the vans emptied out their contents onto innocent looking roads and litter-free side walks.

Tony, Steve and Fury went as team one along with some higher ranking agents.

The new base was underground. The only entrance was a man hole. They were literally hiding out in the sewers. Tony chuckled to himself, only stopping when the smell of someones late curry hit his nostrils. But as you went down the smelly tunnels there came a side hatch in the brickwork. If you entered that, voila, base.

This was more like it, Tony mentally remarked as he was suddenly surrounded by just installed equipment and a hoard more agents and bright white lights. It was all a bit MI6. More guards left to help the transfer effort. For apparently Loki was somewhat of a threat and quite a high class visit. Let's say a VIP.

When they were brought down, Tony's Loki, who could be identified by the lack of belt strapped round his mouth, was released into Fury's custody, they only having one functional cell at the moment. They didn't let him wander jack free however, they just handcuffed him to Fury's desk. Fury's desk which was apparently nailed to the floor. Even Fury didn't know why.

Tony himself noticed the wandering stares which were to be expected considering his choice of escort, and tolerated the 'hidden' snipers but what he could not ignore were the tracking devices they kept trying to place on him. He wasn't exactly planning to go anywhere. There was no damned place to go.

Slowly the complex filled with people and faces Tony half recognized. Fury had taken off with Steve, leaving Tony with one of the computer technicians named Susan. She seemed nice. Smelled a bit too strongly of men's deodorant, but nice all the same.

"We're going to have to take shifts." Announced Nat as she exited one of the alcoves and approached Tony, Fury, Clint and Steve close behind. Wasn't he invited to their club house meeting? _What a surprise..._

"Two or three hours each time- stay back from the glass and for god sake don't listen to what he says." Fury had taken over and the discussion they had obviously started without him was now continued in front of Susan's clean white computer bearing desk. "Clint, you're first. Don't kill the man."

"No promises, sir."

Clint left to babysit while the others walked back into another room. This time it was their designated 'Meeting Room' where it was only them, three couches and a semi-kitchen.

Bruce was still no where to be seen.

"Where's lean and green, then?" Asked Tony, finishing off the biscuit he'd plucked from the meeting room's barrel. How he'd missed normal food yet he could do with some cheese bricks right now. He'd plonked himself down onto the black leather sofa and was lounging casually. The others, like the party killers they were stood looking down at him.

"Off somewhere cooling the blood pressure." Replied Fury. At this Nat departed the group, moving over to the sink and started making coffee. Clint followed.

"Well then, call him back, and when's Pepper going to be here?"

"Soon."

"Can I speak to her?" Steve wondered off to see what was in the stainless steel fridge.

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Why ruin the surprise?" Tony didn't look away from Fury's unmoving frown.

"I don't think you trust me." Fury hardened the gaze but Tony just smiled back, the air around them starting to heat up a little. How many almost arguments was he going to have to get into?

"Nonsense." Tony bit his lip feeling the emptying room bare down on him. Were they running away from this? Tony let them go, the cowards. He could hardly call them that, but still. He was allowed, he was annoyed.

"You haven't trusted me since the moment I stepped down have you?"

"You're getting slow in your old age, Stark." Tony nearly stood, but not fully wanting to get anymore confrontational, he didn't.

"I'm not bad, okay? I'm pissed and I'm damn god confused, but I'm not bad. You gotta believe that, okay? You gotta believe it because no one else will. Get Thor and he can back me up."

"How?"

"I'll tell him about the red hair and I'll make jokes only he'll understand. I can show you I was no more than a hitchhiker over there. I wasn't sitting down, twiddling my beard scheming to destroy the universe. I'm a good guy. Don't you see?"

"When Thor gets back, maybe he can testify for you, but that won't be for a while."

"Why not?" Fury's silence only made him angrier. "Have I done anything? Have I done anything but save your whiny ass? All I want is a beach somewhere in the Bahamas and for that sonofabitch Loki forgotten. I didn't... I didn't join your super secret boy band for this."

"You know how you look, right?" Tony half-screamed into his hands that had only come to rub away the tiredness.

"And that's what makes it worse." He grumbled, words half slurred between his fingers. "I told him not to come but _any_ Loki _anywhere_, do you think he's going to listen?"

"Alright, Stark, I'll make you a deal. I want you on top notch behavior and I'll believe you." Tony's shoulder's slumped. "But you even step a foot out of line..."

* * *

Loki was sat in one of Fury's 'offices.' Since he put the manacles on his other the drain had slowed considerably. Actually being in the same dimension helped to stem the leak and replenished his power. Most was previously getting lost as it traveled and so now that factor was cut, less transfer was needed in the first place. He felt a lot better, he was certain of that.

As Tony was off dealing with his Midgardian affairs, calming the raging suspicions that surrounded him, he was left.

He was alone and unseen by Tony. Now he could satisfy one of the million questions in his mind. He stood, chair squeaking as it slid along the smooth floor behind him. With a jerk of his wrists the handcuffs were broken and he was free of those pathetic bonds. Something told him Fury wasn't trying to keep him down. He then turned to face the door only succeeding in making some poor female agents lips turn down. He had to walk through the bunker. Whatever this incarnations Thor had been up to it certainly seemed to include magic dampening sigils. It wasn't that it took away the power, just that any magic used would have little or no effect, the sigils casting out a simultaneous counter spell. He was still quick enough to dodge the various bullets that came his way. He set off various alarms on his travels to the 'dungeons.' Everything once tiled white was now bathed in a flashing red and the air filled with irritating sirens. Humans and their funny ways. They sent in squads to stop him getting further but even without magic, reinforced doors are very effective barricades if you know how to use them improperly.

"Loki." He said to the ill looking man in the glass blockade.

"Loki." The other replied looking at him. Loki ignored the knocks from behind the twisted, welded door. They were trying to use battering rams - it was almost funny.

"What am I missing?"

"Tony does not want you to know."

"I don't care what Tony does or doesn't want."

"Well then, you might want to sit down." When Loki stood still, the other laughed, continuing anyway. "All those gaps in your mind, all the potential that nothing seems to fulfill. Your darker hair, your darker heart, you never wondered?"

"I had ass-"

"Assumed you were the one with different genes, or on those many a night crying yourself to sleep you played with idea of being a bastard. But you're not. You are royalty. Just not Asgardian royalty."

"Then who?" Loki mocked him with no response. Loki's fist struck the glass as hard as his anger would allow, it hurt him more than it did the glass. The Loki sat contemptuously behind his glass cocoon was content in his tormentful silence. Loki ripped his head back to the continuing hammering at the door. He walked towards it. "Who?" He asked again, voice stern.

Loki smiled.

* * *

Tony heard the alarms go off.

"Oh well Tony, your friends gone and done it." Without even thinking about it, they were off.

As it turns out, Tony could run faster than Fury. Today was just brimming with things he didn't expect to happen happening, but this time he appreciated it. They were running through other agents and into each other, generally just panicking. Although saying that, it was mainly Tony doing the panicking, Fury was more screaming commands to people and trying not to have a stress-induced heart attack.

As he reached the door, the other soldiers being ordered aside, just before Tony could knock, the door was ripped from it's hinges. Having an epiphany of his own, there stood a very upset looking and very blue looking Loki.

Tony isn't a hundred percent sure about what it was that just died in his stomach, but if you told him it was anything smaller than an elephant, he'd punch you in the face. While in the mood he was in now, he might just punch you anyway.

"Wait-" He called out, hurt filled red eyes meeting his. Loki disappeared. Aw shit... No, no, no holy crap to the no. "Loki?!" He called out, his cry hastening Fury's push to the front of the riffle wielding crowd.

"Tony?" Fury questioned, pure rage in his voice.

"Put this place on lock down." His voice was more broken up than he would've deemed necessary.

"Loki?" Fury asked again, pulling out his gun in one hand and his radio in the other. Tony's exhausted sigh said it all.

Sirens blared and protocols were recited.

Loki had presumably just gone bad guy, and the one they still had was chuckling to himself, pleased with his achievement.

Now they had to go find the damn fool.


	16. We came crying hither

It had been three days since Loki's self-discovery session.

Tony was sat staring blankly at a computer screen. It was displaying pages and pages of black words on white backgrounds, but it was all sort of blended into one murky grey splodge.

He was tired, if you couldn't tell. Tired of News reports and bad coffee and SHIELD. Mainly SHIELD. He could deal with the constant stream of 'I'm only asking because I'm interested' as they pried into recent happenings, and he could just bare the lack of breathing room, but one thing really was starting to grate him. Those bastards won't let him use a phone. Tony knows how to, and has on more than one occasion risen from his bunk to go get one. But every time he turned back, knowing that if he tried to do anything out of probation, he was super-dooperly screwed. Not to say he wasn't already.

But he couldn't speak to Bruce, or Rhodey or Pepper. All of his friends were being withheld from him and he was going insane. The company offered in return was alright when it was Clint or Romanoff, but when they were out he was left with the Gestapo. _Just a few more days_, was his new mantra, often coupled with _just one more glass_.

Things may be rocketing down the trash dump for him, but at least he wasn't wearing that damn god atrocious 'uniform' anymore. Not that he didn't _technically _have to, he just didn't. He wasn't _that _desperate to be thought innocent.

He and the others had exhausted all the available leads during their search. Contact of any kind had been severed from Asgard. Something was wrong up there. Very wrong. So they had to use their own powers and that was never going to get them anywhere fast. They still had a rather fed up Loki down in their little love dungeon and no way to move him. They also had one ne're-do-well Loki on the loose, last sighted atop of the Brooklyn Bridge for some odd reason that no one had yet figured out. With all the new media attention and global uproar, the SHIELD staff were a little stressed to say the least.

Tony had to get something done. There was little he could do on the Asgard situation so he stayed out of that one, but for the last few days he'd been trying to find the lost boy.

But where would Loki hide?

He guessed he'd have to ask the man himself. He laughed at that idea. He'd searched security cameras all over the USA, figuring if he wasn't in the free world, he wasn't the free world's problem. He'd also dug up a few files he shouldn't have and was in the process of trying to read them. That's where the grey splodge comes in. All of these attempts had so far been unsuccessful, but asking Loki Laufeyson for help? That would do little good apart from put Loki in the loop, and loops can come back round and bite you in the ass.

But that's all he had left to do.

He couldn't, however, just stroll down and pop in to say hi. Again, he had hell's Fury up his ass wielding sharp objects and threatening to scratch. He had to be very double-0 about this if he was going to do it- he had to go incognito.

His shift, if it could be called that, finished in twenty minutes. His next started in ten hours a forty minutes. Time in between then was 'free' and 'unmonitored'.

If he said he was going to bed then somehow tripped the CCTV that he knew they had on him 24/7, perhaps he could pull a little magic himself.

So after 20 minutes of staring at more _probably_ useful screens, he gets up, declares loudly that he's going to bed and then goes off to his private bunks which are little deeper into the underground complex.

For five minutes he feigns sleep. He doesn't change into bed clothes, not wanting to meet the second prince of Asgard in his boxers, but when he gets up again, declaring how he needs the toilet to the people the other end of that camera in his vent, he does take a different shirt.

He does stop off at the toilets, just to freshen up and keep up the charade. He's too tired for a mastermind plan so he goes with the 'keep it simple and pray' technique. It's worked wonderfully in the past. Second shirt in his hands, he pads back to his station, which is now almost empty. There are very few office-y people about.

Tony was typing the fastest he had all day, utilising a few skills and tricks he happened to have perfected to get into SHEILD's 'new and improved' system. He was cautious that they might be monitoring him now, but the lack of sudden prosecution suggested they weren't.

Dodging a few red herrings planted for him in the coding, he's in. Whether they know he's in or not is different matter but again, no one's barging in to bust his balls so he takes that as a good sign.

There - The same five minutes of him sleeping is playing on repeat in the security office. He's sleeping like a baby like he hasn't done at all in the past few days. The only problem is his computer will shut down at three meaning he's only got four hours to do the dirty before the program he's running is wiped. He can find the dude they've been hunting for three days in three hours. Easy. That's when he starts making his way down to the ex-nuke bunker, now classified cell.

Something makes Tony suspect that life hates him. This something is that he runs into Susan, your friendly neighbourhood technician who is working late. She's at her desk and he's got his head poked round the corner. This can go three ways. One, he turns back round, lets the professionals deal with the problem and goes to bed. Two, he walks in charmingly, making it seem like he's meant to be up. Or three, he runs past screaming, hoping she'll not call it in. He likes two the best, so he goes with that.

"You still working?" He asks, strolling in like he's not about to go and commit social suicide.

"Are you?" She replies, not looking up from her furious typing.

"You know me, sleep just isn't..." He bites his lip, breathing deep. He's a shit actor and he knows it. "Well, have fun with the paperwork." She nods from her almost finished report.

"You to." He turns and goes, feet quick and muscles tense. "Oh and Tony," He conceals his 'oh shit' face then turns around with a pleasant, so not suspicious smile.

"Yeah?" A thousand possible things she might say next run through his mind. Doing bad things makes him paranoid.

"I won't tell anyone, but I just wanted to say good luck." Tony's brain does a back flip.

"Sorry?" He plays innocent... or tries to. Fingers fidgeting in his pockets.

"It's a good idea." Tony's not sure whether that was relief that just ran through him, or worry that there might be a 'but' at the end of the sentence. "Just go find that ass before he does anything big. I've got enough work to do already."

"Okay...?" He starts towards the holding block again but this time with her permission. Was he really that see-through? Was it that easy to see what he was going to do, or was she just hoping that someone would? Anyway, he doesn't run into anyone else as he goes. From then on it's all about tricking locks and trying to figure out password codes. He uses the edge of his shirt to press the buttons and open the doors. Knowing SHIELD, they'll probably finger print the place trying to frame him. This was all open last time he came down here, security must be tightening up. They're evidently expecting something, and with good reason. It's just funny that they think a few locks will stop anyone who wants to get in, or out.

He saw it, the door that blocked their miscreant from view.

Tony deleted his self-preservation instincts and opened it, descending unto the vault. When he enters the room, the reticent prisoner stayed as such.

Tony doesn't say a word but shuts the door gingerly.

"Nice place you got here," He comments approvingly. "White on white, simple, elegant. I think it looks modern." Still Loki is silent. "Minimalist. Suits you."

"How can I help you today, Stark?" His voice is quiet, and Tony's not sure if that's what Loki wants or whether it's the distance between them. That reinforced glass is _thick_.

"You know, it's surprising how these puny walls can hold you. I thought the _mighty and terrifying Loki_ could escape anything!" Loki considered Tony's words with a laugh.

"You should have seen me escape my last cell - it was something quite spectacular. It went up in purple and green flame, the temperature hot enough to vaporise the ground. The crater can be seen from the adjacent planet. The explosion itself even fractured space for a second. A wall is only not a wall when it doesn't exist."

"Please don't do that here, the bill would be horrendous. I mean we get taxed for putting a picture up." Loki drifted off, Tony assumed him to be reminiscing that sentimental git. Tony really should get on topic, but Loki's voice is nice to listen to, in the least creepy and 'fraternising-with-the-enemy' way. He sat on one of the guards chairs. They'd given up their 'shift' idea. Loki was making each and every one of the appointed staff, who were meant to be expertly trained against that sort of thing, run away crying. The white cheap plastic chair groaned with his weight. _What a compliment._

"You wish I hadn't told him?" Loki asked, picking at his fingernails with such casual ease. Tony laughed briskly, picking holes into the denim of his jeans.

"Of course-" Tony re-thought his answer, disregardful of what his brain would possibly call morals. "No..." He just wished Loki would listen for once. It's a trait he, both new and old, shared. They never listened. "But why the hell do you always lash out? Why can't you just accept who you are, realize that doesn't mean you have to be any different than who you were and get on merrily with your life. So what if you're a blue giant monster, Bruce is a green giant monster some of the time and he's saving lives, not taking 'em" He daren't open his eyes as he heard a clunk against the glass. "Besides, everyone's a little odd - granted you get the award for maniac of the year but at least you get a prize for it"

"Now you're moping about your own troubles - I must warn you, I'm not a psychiatrist." He was a little off topic, granted.

"Shut up." Tony looks to the barren walls. It's just plain white and smooth. It's brighter than in the room than the single overhead bulb should allow, but Tony not complaining. Being in the dark with this guy didn't sound fun.

"Why are you here?" Loki ponders. "One last stab to humanize me? To ask for my help?"

"I've never tried to make you anything other than you are and I'm not about to start wasting my breath. I'm just here to..." He stopped, finally facing what he'd been trying not to look at. Loki was sitting with his back to the wall, away from him, head relaxed against the white plastering inside his little play pen.

"Here to get away from them?"

"Yeah - smart-ass" Tony doesn't admit that he's asking for help, and neither does he totally appreciate the psycho-analysis but he puts up with what he's given. The alternative is a night of sleep-less worrying and humming the alternating songs stuck in his head.

"They're odd, aren't they, the rest of them. All rushing about meddling in things better left alone." He shut his eyes again, waiting for a wave of _so not tears _to dry up. He's not sure why he's crying, _and he's not_, but he is.

"Bless 'em, they try." He laughed to himself, remembering the way they blindly came to false conclusions about things he was telling them. Then he thought it way too dangerous territory and laughed again.

"Trying in vain is the sign of a fool."

"Fools who managed to capture you." Tony thinks he's got Loki on this one, but evidently he hasn't.

"You captured me, Stark. You figured me out - you're the only one here worth my breath. I can see what I saw in you."

"You saw in me some petty game and cheap entertainment."

"What else is there to see in someone? Entertainment implies fascination, games require a reason to keep playing. Ever thought about that Stark?"

"Okay this is starting to sound like I've broken up with him in some cheesy, PG-13 Rom-Com" Loki laughs. "Whatever you're trying to say or do, spare us all and don't." Finding the kind heart to stop laughing, Loki replies.

"Fair enough." Silence then descended onto them like a hoard of noisy locusts. It wasn't uncomfortable per se, but it wasn't the easiest of pauses for Tony. Loki however was enjoying it.

"You look really ill," Tony commented, earning a slightly insulted eye brow from Loki. "I mean, have you even heard of Head and Shoulders? Because you, my friend need to use some."

"Looks matter little." Loki retorts, choosing not to be insulted, merely entertained.

"You used to be a vein little god. Practically paralyzed me for trying to touch your hair - you don't even want to know what your face looked like when I suggested you grow a bit of stubble."

"Stubble was always Thor's thing."

"Yeah - that's what you said before." Tony remember back to his brief liaison In Asgard. He almost missed it.

"Do you often imagine me with various other features?" Tony laughs at the slightly funny remark, knowing that Loki meant it to hold many a perverse and age-inappropriate things. According to Wikipedia, Tony knows that youthful god is in fact thousands of years old. _Looking good_, he thinks but doesn't even consider saying.

"Not until recently." He could feel the vibrations from Loki's low laugh travel through the air. "Something funny?"

"I was such a fool." Loki jokes, eyes a little brighter.

"A bloody idiot - You were so irritating I nearly hit you on multiple occasions." Loki comes in next with a very unexpected and off-putting question.

"Would you like to come in?" Tony's not entirely sure what to think, do or feel. It's a feeling he's growing used to.

"Excuse me?" His eyes were open again, Loki had not moved, if pulled his knees up closer to him.

"It must be hard to hear me from behind four inch glass. It's not like I can do anything to you." His eyes searching for Tony and his acceptance.

"I'm fine here."

"My magic is as bound as my wrists."

"I'm still good." Loki relented, head tilting forward. It _was_ hard to hear, but if Loki even thought for a second he was getting in there with a psychopath- he stood up.

Using the bars as a support, he walked round to the door - the only place with no more four inch glass. Instead it had about hundred magical binds, six inch steel and a deadlock bolt. Slipping the keys, which he really shouldn't have from his jean pockets, he unlocked it. The click and churning of a thousand cogs was soothing. Every fibre of his telling him this wasn't a good idea, but everything else making him really not give a crap. Pulling it open, stepping inside, then locking it again, his knees collapsed on him. "You haven't slept?" It's not concern in Loki's voice, its intrigue, but Tony answers anyway.

"Not for a while – no."

"Eaten?" Loki asks again, this time a little softer.

"Not for a while – no."

"Have you even had a drink?"

"Does vodka count?" Tony shuffled along the ground, resorting to a sub-breed of worming as his feet went numb. He sat with his back to the glass, imitating Loki with a meter between them. "Anyone ever tell you you're an asshole?" He was well aware that he'd probably just fallen for Loki's thought out and rehearsed plan, but in keeping with the theme of his life, he doesn't care.

"Not in those exact words, no."

"Well you're an asshole." Wrapping his arms around his shins and holding his elbows, his head flopped onto his knees. "And so am I." Tony knows he's insane. He welcomes it and embraces it. It's an old friend, that insanity.

"Agree to disagree."

He hummed a high pitched 'asshole' in response. He didn't want Loki's sugared tongue right now, well he did, but he told himself he didn't. It made it feel less immoral.

"It feels nice, doesn't it?" Tony looks up, sceptically.

"What?"

"To be caged - imprisoned. You're being controlled and it's such a relief." Loki looks sincere, but looks, as he knows all too well, can be awfully deceiving.

"Alright - I don't need the insight into what gets you off beneath the sheets." Tony looked back to the door, then to his watch. Three hours left. "Were they controlling you?" He asked, trying to jam all the questions he had delayed into their time now. Tony had figured it out back when he realized he was being controlled by the tesseract. He doesn't exactly know why he hadn't figured it out before - well, revelations have an annoying tendency to come after the main event. Still didn't excuse anything though, they were just explanations, and that's all Tony needed right now. He also needed solutions but it is way too late for that kind of crap. Loki didn't answer, until the exact moment he did.

"What's the best way to torture a being born of frost?" Tony didn't answer, just hugged his legs closer. "Heat." He was pretty sure it was inappropriate to be feeling sorry for him. Bad pasts explain bad deeds, but do not excuse them, except in the very rare cases when they do. It wasn't fully coercion. Loki was having a bit of an identity issue, but it wasn't all him. Not completely. _Yes it was. _Jesus, did he turn into a teenage girl once he was tired or some shit?

"If you hit the wasps nest - prepare to be stung."

"But I hit the wasp nests that was hiding hornets, Stark, yet I think you know that."

"Course I know that - I'm the only one who's not a fool, remember?" Tony didn't forgive him, he could never pardon Loki of all those lives, all the death and destruction, and he went too far, by his choices or not. But it doesn't mean that he had to hold a pretty shitty past against him 24/7. Hell, if he did that, he didn't know what he'd have to do.

"You came to ask where he is, I believe." Tony nodded a small nod.

"I'm not even surprised that you know that."

"Give me your hand." Tony thinks his response is pretty obvious.

"No."

"Then I can be of no help. Good luck finding him, you may leave." Loki's sudden cut of the conversation is an emotional plot, but one Tony falls for, almost happily. Tony held out a balled fist. Looking to his handcuffed wrists, Loki gives him a pleading look.

"I'm not that insane." Defends Tony, while shuffling closer which is admittedly a little hypocritical. He puts his hands where Loki can reach them, those manacles have a little leeway between them. Loki took it with gentler than expected fingers. "Open." Tony did. Tony then cried out a little. Loki had burnt red and sore coordinates into his left hand. Tony swears and Loki doesn't appreciate his mother being called a female dog, but he lets it pass, just for Tony's sake.

"You could've just told me!" Tony yanked his hands away, comforting the freshly made wound.

"Those will change depending on whether or not he moves. Unless you want to keep coming back to me every time he's not where you thought he was, I thought that the only option."

"Still - what's wrong with a magical biro and pen? Maybe you could text the locations. Burning them into my hand? Not cool."

"Get some sleep, Stark." As if to offer demonstration, Loki shut his eyes, all signs of him acknowledging Tony's existence disappearing in a flash. Tony left the cage shutting the door, _with one hand, _a little louder than needed. Loki didn't seem to care.

He looked down into his palm where the elegantly carved,_ carved, _coordinates lay. He knew those numbers, he knew that location.

He looked to his watch.

He had two hours and three quarters to get to his tower.

Why the hell was Loki there?

He then remembered that he couldn't just run home, he had to actually plan this.

Then he forgot and did a number three all the way out of locked doors and prying eyes. It worked pretty well. He only had to knock four agents unconscious and may have accidently impaled one with a pencil. They deserved it... Somehow.

When he arrived back to his precious, just about standing homestead, Loki had moved, that annoying little runt, obviously knowing Tony was near.

His home was no longer alarmed, now unneeded and so abandoned. He was free to roam, and roam he did. It was rather a quick roam, this being a time sensitive scenario and all.

He had two hours and a half to get to some warehouse the other side of state. So stockpiling his resources while he was here, he broke into the bordered up basement and grabbed a few supplies. Namely a suit.

Oh he a missed his bad boys.

He made it to this warehouse in two hours twenty-five minutes.

He ran in, praying to god that the marks on his hands wouldn't shift again. He still resented them. He didn't want a Loki detector on his skin, although thinking about it they could come in handy. They hadn't changed yet, so that meant they weren't going to, right? Using a little assistance from his suits GPS he tracked down Loki's exact Location. They lead him to a shut door that wasn't ominous at all.

Still not completely sure what he wanted to accomplish, Tony kicked down the door descended the steps. His footfalls sounding impossibly loud in the dark room. His hand held the same numbers still.

"Come and speak to me when you are not dressed in iron." Tony damn near wet himself when Loki broke through the silence. Well, he'd found him. He ran back up, shredding armour in a way which allowed easy access if he ever returned and was in need of it. He continued handing out his crazy cards and returned down the steps, completely unarmed. When he was at the bottom, the clunky wall lights of this storage cellar flickered into action, Loki standing at the far end of the rectangular space.

"Heimdall will not answer." His voice was unrevealing, cold and crisp. His hands which were clasped behind his proudly straightened back were the only thing Tony could see of skin.

"So you're stuck with us mere mortals?" Tony looked behind him, feeling nerves start to prickle at his skin. This couldn't end well, but still he had to try. "We're not much fun but, I don't know; we can play scrabble?"

"You knew?" Tony licked his drying lips. He wanted more than anything to go up to that marble statue and turn him round, just so he could see a face. See a face, Stark reasoned, and more often than not you see an emotion. Emotions of the enemy are a good way of gaging how much trouble you are in. Right now Tony was just guessing and that made the whole thing scarier.

"Kinda."

"You all knew?"

"Sucks to be lied to, doesn't it?" Snarking off to the god didn't make Tony feel as good as he thought it would. It made him feel worse, if anything. But still Loki stood there, stoic and unmoving and that was starting to make Tony angry. Not for any sane or explainable reason, but Tony had never considered himself sane or even very good at explaining things so that didn't surprise him much.

"I am a monster?" Tony took a second to savour the moment. Loki was doubting himself? Quick, someone call an ambulance. He chuckled to himself, probably not for eithers benefit. He knew this was meant to be a serious moment, but he'd never been very good at serious either.

Remembering to look down at his clock he noted how he only had three minutes left before Fury noticed he was missing.

"Aren't we all?" Tony responded, finally.

"In many different senses."

"So, not to rush you or anything but do you think maybe we can leave the nasty cellar now? I've never been too great with the dark."

"The darkness should never frighten you." Loki answered. "Only what is blocking the light."

"I like it! Is that Shakespeare?" Tony does believe that Loki laughed. That was either unbelievably brilliant news or the beginning of Tony's end.

"My brother, or rather Thor, used to say I had a way with words." Tony staid on the spot, feet shuffling on the dusty, exposed wooden floorboards.

"You'll have to prove that to me sometime." Tony challenged, trying to give Loki something to 'look forward to'.

"I and Shakespeare share a common title." Loki was rambling, obviously appreciating the conversation, or preparing to attack, either one.

"Oh yeah?"

"The wordsmith." Loki's words were quick and sharp and made Tony's stomach feel a little odd.

"Meh, I'm sure you've been called better."

"And worse."

"No doubt." Tony glanced again at his watch. Barely a minute. He had to risk that step forward. "So about leave-"

Tony's back was slammed into the floor, the air knocked out of him and kept out by a restricting hand on his throat. Tony didn't struggle, or tried not to.

Loki's face was agonisingly close to his, harsh words being seared into his ears.

It was around the time that Tony began to pass out that Loki let go.

"This was a trap?" His venomous mouth was wet and red. He had been biting them, by all accounts.

Tony tried to argue, his voice only whispered scratches. Loki had properly hacked up his vocal chords there.

Loki's suddenly all to animated eyes searched in the darkness, no doubt hearing the sound of wandering feet blaring in the distance that only his superior hearing could make out.

"You came to-?!" Loki continued looking down at a purple faced Stark who was half rolling around. Loki crouched again, eyes dark, the blue of Tony's arc reactor reflected in them. "That was smart."

"I-" Tony managed, coughing and spluttering, generally learning his lesson that talking wasn't the grandest idea. To stop Loki's ascent Tony grabbed his collar, pulling him back down. "No-" He _had_ to stop doing that. Loki's eyes darted around the room again as he heard the distant approaching of an unwanted and completely impossible visitor.

"You expect me to believe you?" Tony shrugged pathetically, still wincing at the burning in his throat. That grip was going to leave a mark. Lifting him by the shoulders and in one solid quick motion slamming him back down again, Loki growled at Tony who just shut his eyes and didn't try to speak. "Why did you come?"

Tony opened his eyes, then his mouth, cracks breaking into his lips, stinging. Tony shrugged, his back starting to ache in a delayed reaction. Tony groaned, turning away from Loki who was still looking at him. He wished Loki would stop, or leave or something. Yes, that was the opposite of what he wanted but Tony was about to die here. 'First, to thine own self be true' and all that crap.

Loki did leave, just unfortunately taking Tony with him. This was really going to help his plea of innocence, wasn't it?

Notes:

I would really appreciate any time given to reviewing :D I'm a confused writer who doesn't completely know how to continue.

Thanks for reading this far, though :P


	17. He came, he killed, he confused everyone

He was deposited rather unceremoniously onto the damp floor somewhere else. Somewhere also dark but also musky and damp smelling. At least he was alone this time. But why was he alone? Why was he anything at present? With all those mini-cramps in his every goddamn muscle, he hurt too much to care at present.

He flipped from his stomach onto his back, grunting.

_Loki._ That bipolar bastard wasn't here, of that much Tony knew. Where ever he _was_, Tony was also sure he was making mischief for both he and himself.

Sometimes he wished he'd just leave things alone and just let bad things happen. Things sure seemed like they'd be a lot simpler that way.

He puffed into the air, watching as the white-smokey breath went up into the sky. He was outside then. What kind of place smelt musky outside? It was grassy and muddy, but apart from that he was at a loss. Why couldn't reindeer games drop him somewhere awesome with that space hopper of his? What's wrong with Vegas? Or the aforementioned Ibiza? Didn't that man have _any _taste?

He doesn't bother sitting, for a moment he doesn't even bother breathing, he just sits there holding in all the air he can until it burns. When he breaks, his back slams into the ground, and the sound of a car goes past. Now he sits up. He was on the side of a highway and pissed off about it too. It was a very empty Highway, granted, but a highway none-the-less. As if to mock him, there's a service station just across the road. He feels desperatly his pocket - no money, but he gets up, brushes of the sticky, suspicious smelling muck and plays a curious game of chicken to cross the road. It's typical that the main rush of traffic comes when he's mid-cross, not when he's a dribbling mess at the side and safe. He wonders in to the Esso garage, deflecting a few more curses from annoyed drivers, finding the warmth and softly playing radio very welcome. The elderly woman behind the counter doesn't look up as the automatic doors shut behind him. Don't suppose they'd do an IOU, would they?

He browsed in the car section, running a finger over the oil in thick black plastic containers. He even picked up the car washer fluid because that blue was quite pretty.

It's when he devolved into a coughing fit, rousing the check-out clerk, that he remembered why he had risked his life to come here anyway. He walked over to the snack section, taking just a moment to glance up.

The woman watches him as he looks at his image in the reflective glass. He's scruffy as hell, and that's probably why 'Sandra' doesn't recognise him. She turns away, busying herself with something or other, like she knows what he's about to do.

He's not a thief really, he'll send them a cheque for a million or whatever but right now he needs that drink and he happens to have no cash or card on him. How funny, a billionaire reduced to a beggar. He doesn't laugh.

He takes it under his arm and out of the store so sneakily it almost worries him. It was cold under his shirt and made the skin around it prickle, but knowing what was contained in the clear plastic, red capped bottle made the crime seem more than worth it. He breathes up into the sky as he stands by the road, willing his tired legs to cross. Where the hell does he go now? Where even is he? He assumes Earth, but with that Crack-Case, he's come to learn that anything is possible. He watches the white mist fall from his mouth again, a little lost. He crosses the road, no traffic there this time, just a tiny little blue Peugeot. Once he's sat once again where Loki had dropped him, he drinks. He's never been happier than now at the cooling, rehydrating feel of Coca-Cola Vanilla as it gushes down his gullet. It's sweet and sugary and just what the doctor ordered. He finishes it way before what he deems fair.

The his mind travels to Bruce as his head hits the grass. It's still soggy and mushy but it's nice and cold against the hot pressure in his skull. He missed that green poodle. He thinks he just needs a friend... Yeah... That'd be nice...

So he lies there fiddling with the cap of his coke and hums 'Thunderstruck' in the hope that a certain god might hear, get his blonde/ginger ass down here and give a guy a hand.

But of course that'd be the easy solution, and that only happens in movies. No, Tony had a feeling this might be a little different from the good guy vs. bad guy trope. For instance, he classes himself as the hero - the dashing saviour and the one who gets the girl (almost) but he's hanging out with the big no-no dude. If that'd happened in Die Hard that would've been a weird film. Well, _weirder._

Now he's flipping the lid into the air, then catching it, then flipping it, then catching, flipping, catching, flip, catch, flip-

Then he drops it, and thinks that it's probably time for sleep, but he's done many a thing during his life and falling asleep next to a high way with stolen goods in his hands was not about to become one. He does however let himself drift off into something that can't quite be classed as consciousness. He hadn't slept in four days. He'd earned some down time. He'd mope over his situation later.

When Loki appears by his feet, waking him from his stupor, it's clear he'd been crying. Beaten up a little too by the looks of things. But Tony doesn't even have time to be either happy or disappointed that his cab arrived before Loki practically barks at him.

"Get up." And Tony does try to, honest, but everything's just feeling a little funny at the moment. So, dripping with impatience, _and blood,_ Loki yanks him up by the still overgrown hair on his head. "I said get up."

"Have fun?" Tony splutters, still a little scratchy voice box wise. That man has a tight grip. Loki stares at him, a little bit of the first Loki he knew and hated shining through. Thankfully not all though. Tony took this moment to realise that he actually wanted to know how this little thing would end. Scientific curiosity, he nicknamed it. Loki doesn't answer so Tony refuses to go. But as usual, Loki gets his way. Now they're in some place Tony again doesn't recognise. It's hot - damn hot, and day time, which it shouldn't be. He coughs, and as if life loves him, sound comes out when he next tries. Not that it doesn't still feel like two pinecones rubbing together.

"Where are now?"

"I believe you call it Asia." Tony narrows his eyes, only now looking into his surroundings. It's a higher end slum. The corrugated steel walls are plastered with graffiti and posters and the walkways are roofed by rows and rows of hanging washing and the occasional pair of shoes.

It's quiet, and not exactly as packed as he expected a shanty town to be. There's no one around.

"Where are the residents?" He asks, looking back to Loki, who has distraction and distaste in his eyes. "Hey, your favourite pet has asked a question." Still Loki doesn't respond, refusing to even make eye contact. "So what, you hate me now?" Loki clenches his dirty hands, drawing Tony's attention to the rip in his leathers right by the hip.

"You weren't exactly a friend to begin with." And for some reason, as he looks back up to Loki's face, Tony's hurt, but more wanting to hit him over the head and tell him to get over it. 'It' being the fact that he's adopted._ If that's even the problem this time._

"And-" But before Tony can finish, Loki's grabbed his forearm and moved them.

Next they're in what he thinks is a rainforest.

"Heimdall!" Loki screamed suddenly, Tony ducking down in instinctual defence at the explosion. He may have lost his voice, but Loki sure hasn't. He wasn't expecting the outburst. "Open the gates!" Loki gets more and more frustrated with every cry. His arms are angry, his eyes skyward and dark. "I can't keep this up!" He cries again, this time his voice cracking with something more than desperation.

"Loki!" Tony can't take the angsty bull-crap any longer. "What the hell is going on?" Loki looks down at him, rage and hurt mixed in the reddened green eyes. "Tell me." Tony steps forward, expectant. Loki's breathing slows. Minimally.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Well Tony thinks that's a first.

"You think I'd still be here if I did?" Loki shuffles his feet in agitation, cracking a twig beneath his boots.

"Who are we running from?" Loki looks down at the weed and pulp layered ground, a chortled choke in his throat.

"Tony, we have to keep going but..." He strains to straighten his face. "I am having difficulty. Please do not make the process harder."

When they touch down in the next place, it's raining, hard.

"Umbrella?" Tony asks, looking into the metropolis. What's with the variety? Round the world in eight minutes? It's cheap, but it's making his bowels feel a little odd.

Then Loki's eyes fill with panic, his hand grabs Tony by the shoulders and takes them in somewhat of a rush into what Tony thinks is a darkened mall. That's when a hand appears where it should not. Although hidden by red blood that's also dripping from it's fingertips, it's clear that the skin is naturally blue. Loki makes a gargling sound, probably because that hand is protruding from _his_ chest. From the exit wound forms ice that spreads in all directions, engulfing and cracking the leather and steaming. Tony looks to Loki's face. The same blue as the claw shaped hand is spreading up his neck and eventually envelops his face, eyes turned crimson.

When the hand is pulled out, with a snap and a suck, Loki dropped like a dead weight, which is horribly exactly what he was. Not even a sound came from him, he just fell to the floor, eyes open and mouth gaped. Just that. Nothing else, not a twitch or a moan, just a thud on laminated concrete.

That snarl on the face of the murder made Tony's heart stop. No suit - No ally - Nothing.

_Oh._

He muttered someone's name - probably Loki's but he couldn't really concentrate, mainly due to the fact that the man he knew as Laufey, king of the prestigious and infamous race of blue beasts stood before him, the blood of his son still dripping off his unkempt nails.

"What was that for?" Tony's voice was weak, without the suit he was nothing. Nothing more than an unreliable witness. Laufey laughed, looking down at the clump of leather and flesh at his feet.

"A term and condition." Tony blinked and he was alone. He still stood, staring into that spot that he was sure shouldn't have been empty. He took in a breath, the taste of blood touching his tongue, the smell of it caressing his mind with acid, if that's not too cringe worthy for you.

Okay, maybe he was still- No. He knelt beside the incomplete form, blood seeping through his jeans. He flicked that hair out of his eyes, ruffling it up like he'd always had the urge to. He let his fingers linger, just because if he looked at it like that, he didn't look so-

The marks on Stark's hand disappeared.

He stays there for another moment, trying to figure out just why he's having difficulty breathing in and out like a normal damned human being. Heshuts his eyes, breaths in and out, and things finally start to re-focus.

"He missed." The relief that washed over him as he ripped his head round and saw Loki standing above him was just the right temperature, before turning ice cold and mixing with jagged ice cubes. He jars back to the still quite not alive corpse beneath him, ripping his fingers away like he'd been caught snogging in the broom cupboard.

"What?" Tony stood, panic re-flaring, knees not as strong as they ought to be. Why were there one more Loki than there should be? The one mangled on the floor still didn't move, and the one standing simply crossed his arms.

"I'm joking, he hit quite hard, although I do make a sweet corpse." Was that _this_ Loki? Or- Shit.

"But-" Tony looked down. His phone was ringing in his pocket. He fumbles to answer the phone, eyes now magnetically locked on the upright, and very not dead Loki. Loki shakes his head before Tony can answer, and just because it's been a damn long day and he's a little out of sorts at the moment, he puts it back in his pocket and ignores the vibrating against his thigh. He breathes, and it's when the blue eyes finally register that Tony figures out what's going on.

The suddenly appearing extra side order of insanity, the 'term and condition' crap, all of it. Old-foe Loki's done Prison break and somehow involved his dad - well it's nice they're doing something as a family. Father-son bonding and all that.

"So- er..." Tony keeps staring, sure he'll collapse any second, and Loki stares back, figurative tail wagging. Tony's brain clicks back into order and then it's all 'how the hell do I get out of this one?' This is the Loki he does not want to be hanging out with in any circumstances. Bad Loki, naughty Loki, not a very nice Loki. Loki who blew up New York, chucked him out a window, _twice_, and finished off by making him feel like an idiot. That whole touchy-feely scene in SHIELDS cell block that once seemed useful, now just made him cringe.

But right now, he's in the middle of a closed shopping centre, there's got to be supplies. Supplies to, I don't know, get out of here in one, _very alive_ piece? "New in town?" Tony swallows, just about managing that jesting smile on his face. "I've heard there's quite a few nice motels around here."

"The last one I stayed in was a bit disappointing actually."

"Oh yeah? How so? No chocolates on the pillow? No Casa Erotica on Freeview?" A moment of silent confusion mists in Loki's eyes before he smiles, making Tony's liver do some pretty impressive backflips. "Fancy a shop?" Tony starts walking just for the sake of walking. He walks into the nearest shoe shop, needing a moment to both formulate and calm the freakin' shit down. Yes, okay he broke into it, probably setting off a thousand and three alarms but again, he's having a bit of a dodgy half an hour. Loki follows, even taking some time to pick up a pair of high heels, shrug his shoulders nonchalantly and put them back down with an unexpected grace. Deciding that the overwhelming smell of leather shoes really isn't calming his nerves, more exaggerating them, Tony leaves that shop, still followed by an unnaturally silent Loki. Back in the main complex, he looks briefly back to the still bleeding body that's just lying there unmoved. Great present for the cleaners in the morning. He heads for the next shop, turning his mind away from _that_. His heart starts racing again as his mind gives him horrible, unwanted ideas about what this Loki might do to him. He looks towards his next target, tensed and ready-ish for whenever Loki will strike. He doubts it'll be quick or painless, he doesn't even consider it being clean but what his eyes see, and what his eyes want, aren't matching up well at the moment. He tries to pull up the next shutter, but alas it doesn't give. He tries the next, and the next, and the next until Loki asks what he's doing. "Late night shopping, you know?" Is his response, while his hand his halfway under the steel sheeting blocking him from the door of a DIY shop. DIY means knives, doesn't it? Knives means there's a stab in the dark of getting out of this alive, or pissing him off so much that his death is quick. It's a win win really. He doesn't laugh at the internal pun that he didn't realize he'd made.

Loki, surprisingly, lifts the metal obstruction with a spine chilling ease, rips the handle off the door, silences the blaring alarm and looks him in the face.

"You have 15 minutes" He declares, his jaw line proud. "to find a weapon, dispose of me and disappear before your Midgardian police are here."

Tony doesn't quite know what to say to that.

"Are you more the chainsaw type or hatchet?" Tony presses a hand into his thigh, trying to stop the shaking. He probably looks calm on the exterior, but that comes with practice, but inside? It's the aftermath of a five years old's birthday party at Pizza Hut. There's Ice cream and sprinkles everywhere they shouldn't be and every parents got at least one piece of pepperoni in their hair.

_Oh god, Pepper._

"To be honest, blades have always seemed honourable." Loki answers casually, ripping into a box of matches, striking one, watching the flame for a good few seconds, before squeezing it out with his fingers and discarding it. Ignoring the action, Tony heads for the 'Homeware' section. He comes across a variety of knives and possibly semi-fatal implements, up to and including: Sushi knives, cleavers, bread knives and several silver, fancy looking forks. He takes a moment to rest against one of the shelves, looking deeply into the butter spreaders with the look of a man who hopes they'll magically spring to life and help out. Could he blind Loki with a butter knife? This wasn't going well. He then makes it for a bread knife - the jagged edges, he reasons, will help him carve pretty patterns into the battle armour and leathers that Loki just donned. It's when he turns back, knife raised that Loki takes him by the wrists, holds him up so that his feet barely touch the floor and glares at him.

"You just killed him-" It just kinda comes out. Tony feels like he's just burped really loud in the back of the church and he probably could've had a better analogy that that, what could he say? He was having a bit of a stressful day.

"I had figured that part out." Loki doesn't sound as menacing as he looks. Or does he? On second thought, yeah, he does.

"That wasn't-" He swallows to get some moisture to his ever cracking throat. "That wasn't very nice."

"No, mother_ will_ be angry." He considers it for a moments, thumb running up and down Tony's wrist, feeling the brittleness of the human bone and deciding whether or not to snap it. "I'm going through a rebellious stage."

"But you had no rig-" Then he was on his knees, forced down at the shoulders. He didn't resist, just crumpled like paper beneath Loki's harsh grip. Loki bends down too, hand still gripping a little too tight into his bruising wrist.

"He was just one Loki." Words so softly spoken into his ear had no right to hurt so much. "One Loki out of infinite variations, as I am another. Why is his life more important than mine?" Loki softly slipped the knife out of Tony's hand, sliding it along the floor away from them. It clinked with the metal shelving and glinted cruelly against the automatic lights they'd set off on entering. Tony said not a word, but knelt there, eyes to the fake metal flooring.

He wasn't sad about Loki dying. He barely knew the man. In every incarnation he was evil. It wasn't nurture it was nature. It wasn't circumstance it was-

Lying worked wonders at times like this.

"Well then you son of a bitch - what now?" Loki hadn't thought that far ahead, something he very rarely neglected to do. Now he _had_ thought about it, he now had an idea.

"I have a list. Mainly continuing previous efforts. Perhaps I'll have time for that drink?" Tony laughs a little, licking his pale lips.

"Go to hell."

"I've been - It's hot, granted, but it's more exciting that people seem to think. It's full of bad boys and rebels." He can practically feel Loki's smirk behind his eyes, and that makes him even more uncomfortable than usual.

"So - you still bent on the earth?"

"Possibly. I have options now." Loki seems suddenly distracted, and Tony turns his head. The god's eyes are off looking at the various sharp pointy things, both with a glint of a blossoming idea.

"Daddy run off with the milk maid?" Loki looks back at him so Tony rips his head away. Eye contact with_ him_, sounds joyful.

"Something along those lines." Loki presses a thumb a little harder into the artery in his wrist, threatening to puncture it.

"So you want a war?" That's what the shine and smirk on Loki's lips seem to be hinting at.

"If you would like to call it that." Tony straightens his back a bit, just so Loki has to compensate. Why make the hold easy? Why not press a few buttons before the lights go out.

"On your own?" Tony feels he has to explain, given Loki's silence. "You would conquer worlds on your own?"

"Of course." Tony smiles, shuffling again, Loki not seeming please with the constant fidgeting.

"You couldn't even do it with an army." Loki breathes slowly, the cold air brushing along the back of Tony's neck, tickling the skin.

"No thanks to you." And Tony's neck snaps between his fingers and he discards the sack to the floor. He then felt the click of guns in the air and heard the frantic breathing of twenty men who suddenly recognised the face of whom their guns were pointed at. There went his 15 minutes.

The whole affair ended in the piling of black clothed bodies of agents and officers, scraped knees and scarred leather.

The human's words had sunk in though. He was wise enough to accept wise words when they were spoken. Perhaps he did need a little assistance after all - without his Chitauri masters, he had very little to follow. Why not make it up as he went?

And 'for the fun of it' and to 'give him entertainment', Loki goes back. Back to before Laufey betrayed him. He had expected that, and that's why he'd given Stark the little tracker. It would lead Laufey straight to other him. Laufey didn't know about there being two hims, did he? He'd obviously rush in like the fool he is, no questions asked and kill the wrong one. Tony being the flashing beacon screaming 'look here I am'. It's a wonder his other didn't realise this - no wonder he died, that idiot. Now it seems he'll have to interrupt his father before he can strike first. Allys are good, as Tony had reasoned, especially in times like these, especially with the little issue of cracks.

It's a good thing the gates don't disallow time manipulation. He can't leave this molten rock, but he can go anywhere and anywhen he wants on it.

The fabric of darkness is woven between his fingers. It's done quickly, but by no means rushed. It's with a practised ease he does this, one thread entwined with another.

It's hateful, detestable.

But nethertheless he steps in, bracing as the black energy passes over his cold skin, kissing it like death.

He lands gracefully and silently behind his father, the scene coming into life from a black haze into perfect, colourful clarity.

"May I have this dance?" Loki asks sweetly while digging his hands into his father's fatigue weakened flesh, blood gushing as he displaced and ripped the King's two diseased and failing kidneys. Just as said king materialises, his blue bloodied organs are thrown back into the dark pathways before they closed.

The two men he'd just saved stared at him as the blue clump of a lummox hit the ground, blood splattering and spreading across the floor, icing over and eventually freezing, looking a little like a blueberry smoothie.

"What...?" Blurts Tony, just a little confused. Other Loki, freshly saved, backs away then stands still, unsure but amused.

"I've decided I may have use for you." The newly arrived Loki announces, wiping the cold blood off his hands. Tony Stark swallows, eyeing the action.

"What?" He didn't look away from the hands, his mouth agape. Blood still clung, oddly beautifully, under Loki's nails.

It takes another moment of quiet, almost contemplation before anyone knows what to say. The newly arrived Loki starts cleaning up, moving Laufey into some volcano or another, the sight of him sickening. Other Loki is standing brooding and Tony is there, trying not to fall over. His head's gone a little fuzzy. And once there is no proof of Laufey ever being there, hellraiser Loki turns to them on returning, starting the conversation. And as he starts speaking, Tony turns his mind away from the imaginings he'd dropped into and looks back up to two dissimilar eyes.

"Tony Stark, I am proposing an alliance."

Tony hasn't yet had time to stop laughing. He knows that's dangerous, he knows that laughing in the god of mischiefs face is bordering on insanity, but that's an edge he's used to peering over and to be honest, he's got his own Loki who he likes to think might object to his death. He'll be fine. So he keeps laughing and sniggering into the back of his hand.

"Say what?" He chokes out, once he starts going a little more light headed.

"I need you and you need me." He stops laughing, just, and tries his best at a straight face.

"Sorry, memory's fading with old age - How do I need you again?" This Loki looked around impatiently, shifting on his feet more than any man with a free conscience would. It couldn't just be Loki not wanting to ask for help. He's seen reluctance, and that sn't it. That makes Tony sober a little. What was he missing?

"I just saved your life." Tony and other Loki looked down to the remaining, uncleared smudge of iced blood by their feet, his Loki's chest tightening in something of a semi-buried, un-opened can of worms.

"What did he want with us?" This is the first time Loki's spoken... to himself...

"We made a deal." That answered the question. "He would unlock the bindings and release me from my cage,and in return I would join him. He betrayed me, however, mistaking you for..." He looked up at the tiled, semi-exposed ceiling, adam's apple bobbing. "...Me."

"And so we need you... How?" His eyes flicked back down into the conversation, meeting's Tony's with reluctance. Tony broke it, watching himself as he scratched absently at the scar of an old cut on his wrist.

"Your little SHIELD are plotting your fate as we speak. They're are deciding whether to use tracking missiles or simply lock you up for the rest of your life." Tony's breath hitched, fingers flexing at his sides. Suddenly it's less so much of a joke, more a slightly-funny backstreet gag.

"No, you see-"

"You think they think you innocent? They are not dumb, Stark. They bugged you - I broke their audio connection when you came behind the glass. The video feed cut out when I-" He motioned to other him "-arrived and distorted the EMF field."

"That's natural - They're a spy agency."

"They know their devices are broken, they think you did it on purpose, they think you are in line with me. They are trying to find ways to suppress you. They are close to succeeding." As if you prove his point he pointed over the edge. Following his fingers and stepping closer to the glass door, he looked out. Three very secretive security vans stood proudly in plain sight. "They don't take kindly to you, Stark. They even told you they called Pepper to keep you grounded." Tony stiffened. "She still think's you are dead, and is basking in depression and sun somewhere in Barbados. The barman seems overly keen."

"You bastard."

"I am telling you what they have done Stark. If they don't think you're innocent and are claiming you guilty until proven otherwise, why fight the verdict? Why go against the jury?"

"What do you want?" Tony asks, pretty sure of the answer.

"That is for me to know-"

"I ain't playing that game, buddy."

"This is no game. But I ask we discuss it somewhere a little more private,"

"Scared they'll catch something bad on camera?" Tony snorts. "I think we've passed that point."

Loki takes Loki aside, wishing to end the conversation with Stark. Knowing his place, and quite frankly liking it, Tony wonders off, breaking into yet more shops to find supplies. Also, just because he's started, why stop? Breaking and entering his fun, he can't deny that. Now he's both a thief, a bit more of a thief and a burglar. At this rate, he should be a serial murderer by the end of the week.

Loki, who came here with Stark, starts with his own questions.

"How did Laufey get here? The gates of the worlds are shut."

"You can climb a barbed fence, if the reward is worth the peeled-off skin. You also need to know the lower points but, that was no trouble for a king."

"And my life was?" Loki clarifies. "My life was worth the peeled off skin?"

"You're his runt. You endanger his true son's candidacy for the throne. You are an _embarrasment_. Yes. Your death is worth a thousand scars." They both just stare at each other, both faces hardening. Tony returns from his scavenging, hands as empty as when he started, all the metal guards being too hard to pull up. Looks like that shoe shop just had poor security.

"Well," He announces. "hate to break up the family bonding but why are the 'gates of the world' shut? _Whatever those are_." The Loki Tony actually likes explains it to him, or tries to.

"When worlds start falling in on each other, certain safe guards are in place to stop any contamination. It does howver cut off the worlds, as is our current problem. No one gets in, no one gets out, not without significant skill and a significant lack of sense."

"And how did they start... Shattering?" Many hard and confusing subjects made sense to Tony Stark, and this was not yet one of them. Give him a moment, he'll catch up in a sec.

"Why, I told you. The explosion of my escape fractured the dimensions. Asgard is the point of origin and so there it is strongest, but it is spreading."

"And how exactly did it explode?" Tony started counting on his fingers, counting the many possible ways that an explosion could fracture actual space. He had seven fingers held up when Loki replied.

"All thanks to you. I should reward you."

"How did I play any part in this?" He continued his calculations, making it seem like he wasn't bitter and annoyed at this whole conversation.

"When you came through the dimensions, you weakened it, allowing for another to get through after you." He dropped his hands, looking back to Loki's not-so-ugly mug. So techincally, if Loki caused the black hole in the first place, Loki was technically responsible for all of this? That made him feel so much better.

But someone else got thorugh, presumably to break Loki out, but there was one question on his lips. One asked in a different voice.

"Who?" Loki asked, unexpected urgency in his voice.

"Some girl."

"Who?" The same urgency was there, but Loki was closer, and louder this time. Tony took a step back, you know, just in case.

"I never asked her name." The lesser insane Loki's eyes widened.

"How did she dress?"

"Red and black. She was beautiful." The growl that came from beside Tony made the air around them just that little bit icier.

"Where is she?"

"Well." No one relaxed. "Resting in Vanaheim. I assume you know her?"

"You do not?"

"She is from your dimension, not mine."

"You did not harm her?"

"Of course not, she did me a service." Then they're staring again and Tony wants to run away and generally avoid the brawl that's on its way. "Anyway, we better get going, there's another one of us running free and I happen to know exactly where he'll be." Tony tries not to flinch as his pocket starts vibrating. It can only be one person, literally. It was physically rewired, so with no amount of Tony's tinkering could it be made to ring anyone else. They even removed the god damn unneeded numbers. See, not even a smartphone. A nokia. The other Loki's continue their conversation around him.

"There is another?" The ignorant one asks.

"It's complicated."

"Explain."

Unable to ignore the constant vibrating of his SHEILD issued relic, he answers, silencing the quarrelling twins with a raise of his hand and a nigh-playful hiss.

"Hey..." He drawls, bracing himself for the inevitable shit-storm of Fury's fire.

"Tony." Is all that's said. His shoulders slumped.

"Now I know what you're thinking..." He defends, still positive that the hurricane shit-trina is on its way. "I just went to find him and I did. I'm staring at them right now."

"You found both?" Fury sounds calm. Any type of calm is weird, but this is almost... Too calm?

"Yep."

"Well bring them in and your bacons saved." That's when Tony winces.

"Well, you see, I can't really do that."

"Yes, you can."

"No... I'm pretty sure I can't" His voice his getting higher with every word.

"They killing you right now?"

"...No..."

"They going to?"

"Half might."

"Well then bring them in. Now." The phone clicks dead and the room is silent.

"We aren't going." Loki informs him, one of them, he doesn't quite know which is which anymore. Ones got blue eyes, so he figures that ones the baddie, but that's as far as he's got.

"I'm aware." Tony looked around, those vans seeming to get a little closer. "We need to start moving." He decides, backed up by the two of them. "Pick a country."

"We need to go somewhere where we have supplies." Tony nods, agreeing. It's kinda obvious, but kudos to him for putting in his ideas.

"I'd say my place, but they'll guess I'll go there. It'll be swarming. I'd say Stark tower but obviously..."

"You have another dwelling?" Did they have to interrupt his evil scheming?

"Of course - Malibu- but we can-"

"Give me specifics." Tony did, reluctantly, and Loki was back just as quickly as he went.

"It is empty and unguarded."

"Well... That's not dodgy at all..." Were they seriously considering that a safe place? Sorry? Have they never gone undercover before? For a god of mischief, they were pretty shit at their job.

"It is likely they think it too obvious." Tony takes a step forward, challenging the blue eyed bastard, feeling just a little rise in his suicidal instincts. He's not going to let him put he, Tony Stark, right in the line of fire.

"They'll figure it out. You know, you're not as bright as I thought." Loki grins at him, in that twisted way Tony doesn't like so much.

"You know your way around it. It has supplies. We can guard it. Would you rather go to some strange unexplored land where they can corner you and you will not have any defences?" _Well, it's nice to know he cares. _Tony keeps staring, almost tempted to slap Loki round the face, just to see the reaction, but that's just the tiredness. He's not truly that insane, he hopes.

"Well, I don't trust you." He settles on as a response, slipping his near traitorous hands into his pockets.

"You need not trust me. You need only help me or die." Tony laughs, nodding sarcastically.

"But I don't take well to threats."

"That is generally the point." Tony opens his mouth to release some truly death wish-y insults but someone else speaks before him.

"Please, let's just go." The previously silent Loki seems to beg, almost venomously. As if to annunciate the point, a small red dot appears on his forehead.

The shot is fired, a crack mark, but it flies through thin air and lodges itself into the pretzel stand.

Tony, Loki and Loki have gone to their newest base.


	18. One More Night

When they land, Tony breathes out so hard he thinks he might fracture his spleen. Even with the lights off, and the obvious un-lived-in-ness of the whole place, it's still an amazing weight off his ultimately fragile shoulders just to be home. He separates from the two twins and wonders over the couch and deposits himself there clumsily.

Memories of windows and offered drinks and big huge freakin' alien mothers came back in one big unwanted burst, then went again when Loki,_ one of them,_ spoke.

"There's another you?" Tony vaguely ignored the conversation, focusing on digging his back deeper into the soft stuff beneath him.

"I came back from a different point. You would not understand."

"I'm doing well so far."

"I know where he is, and what he is doing." The Loki Tony can tolerate looks at him.

"I can't believe I'm actually asking this but..." Said Loki has to swallow. "Please go find him."

"It would be my genuine pleasure." The blue-eyed wonder disappeared, the remainder slumping about half an inch.

Tony was left in the room with only one Loki whose green eyes were now very much distracted and distant.

"Bit different to hunting Eigdler beast and sneaking out after dark isn't it?" He offered, crossing his arms over his stomach. Loki didn't respond.

Tony wonders idly on his situation. He knows that the how hide in plain sight tactic is going of end badly, it's just how badly that's now in question.

After a quick R&R session, Tony gets bored of Loki's window revere and wonders off. First he goes to the kitchen, opening the fridge, met with a few rotting veggies, but naught else. He then moves to the decanter, pulling out some of the cheaper stuff, looking at it briefly before putting it back.

When even the idea of drinking becomes stale, he continues he moves on. He knows, but does not control where his feet are headed.

When he gets to the lab, the first thing he notices is the distinct lack of Jarvis, and any of the security or comfort he brings. He nudges open the door with his toes and shuffles in, taking in the oil scented air with distinct glee. He then grimaces at the view in front of him. It looks like he was about to move. Instead of his beautifully, almost clean chaotically systemized working space, he's got a white, brown and silver storehouse.

But with a promise to change that Tony starts working, or planning to that is. There isn't a suit down in his lab, the glass doored viewing slots all empty, and that's a little odd and disconcerting, but he's got enough on his plate without worrying about that. He gathers what he has on the table, mounding the random wires and mismatched bolts, screws and spray cans of WD-40 in an astoundingly harmonic arrangement.

And when that last nail is balanced in a way that defies physics, he starts looking under everything that has been covered in white sheets and packed into cellotaped brown cardboard boxes.

Come on, he was dead for just three weeks and suddenly everyone starts packing away his stuff?

Amateurs.

One sheet that he peels away nearly makes him dance.

There is Dummy, offline and put at an awkward angle by uncaring hands and generally just begging him to do a little magic.

So he wheels him over, collecting a few tools from the smallest of the cheap crates and stops in the light. Within in five minutes, Dummy is pecking at him with his usual adorkableness.

He spends the next hour or three paying with his current companion, adding a few unneeded upgrades, painting him eight different colours before settling back onto black. The pink, although bringing out his newly fitted optical units, didn't seem to appease the tri-fingered assistant.

But then he really must get back to work.

Jarvis or suit? Sweet-welcoming voice of a god or his personified ego?

How about both? Both is good.

He nests down on his still sheeted chair by his plastic wrapped desk and taps the keyboard. The dull tones of the back-up systems blur into life. He opens the version of Jarvis stored deep in his hard drive and decides that he needs a few changes and updates. At least he doesn't have to start completely from scratch. He winces at how long that would take. He types in his passcode, watches the virtual cogs click into place and within three to six seconds he's working. Code spilling from his fingers so fast his brain hadn't time to catch up.

He only looks back up when Loki's at the door. One set of knuckles rapping on the glass, the other wrapped around a generously filled glass of whiskey.

"Ah! Mi Amigo!" Tony motions for him to come in, kicking his legs up onto the desk, relaxing. The glass clinks against the worktop when Loki places it down, and with one finger pushed it towards him. Loki's stood behind the multiple holigramized computer screens, facing him straight on. The blue across Loki's face reminds him a little of what he looked like in Jotun form, but he doesn't care about that.

"You are working?"

"On Jarvis, my AI."

"AI?"

"Artificial intelligence." He leans forward, whispering. "It's a computer program that talks."

"I thought you would be building your suit. You have had many failed attempts."

"Hey- Your blacksmiths got the orders wrong."

"They were to your specifications."

"...One bolt, okay? One bolt was wrong. Not my fault."

"I am interested in seeing this suit. The first time I saw you in it was memorable. What will the second be?" Tony narrows his eyes, Loki is unmoving, and for a moment there is silence.

"What did you come here for?"

"You have questions?"

"Yep."

"Then I came to answer."

"My first is somewhat predictable."

"Continue."

"What the hell is going on?"

"Universes are unstable, realms are being cut off and my other has gone off to find a third copy. You are hiding from your teammates and now working presumably on a way to innocently return to them." Tony just kinda freezes. "What are your current ideas?"

"I was thinking on playing along with my previous excuse- that I went to find you. Maybe you kidnapped me. Maybe you killed me. Maybe you got me to work with you- or perhaps not that one." Loki still doesn't move. "I honestly have no clue about what to do." Tony looks down to the still, blue keyboard. "I mean I know I have to go back," He concludes. "I mean, they're the good guys and you're bad and you guys want to destroy the world and I don't so I have to go back and not be bad I mean what must they be thinking with Pepper and you and-"

"Breathe."

"Thanks." Dummy was picking a few nails up that he may have just hurled across the room. "But seriously. I didn't think it through." He clenches his jaw. "I never think it through." He swiped the glass off the table, it smashed violently on the floor, dark liquid spraying. "Goddamn it." Tony put his forehead to the hard surface, gripping onto it just to feel the corners dig into his palms. "Just take me back." He looks into back up into Loki's eyes, his own almost spilling over. "I don't want to be the bad guy."

"Then I'm afraid you made a very poor choice in friends." Loki takes note of the break down, mind wondering back to the mental guard he had put there when they had first met. He wondered how that was holding up. He wondered what it was keeping from the surface. He was almost tempted to press it, just to see the levee break.

"You're not my friend, can't be." Tony's eyes shut, he just can't breathe. It's all bad but not bad and good but still bad. He can't go back, he doesn't want to be here and he's starting to understand how Loki feels. "Okay, I lied, you bastard. But other you can just go swallow a... He can just go fall into a black whole himself."

He's got a shit loads of questions and can't go back to the one place that's got the answers. Loki leans over the counter, resting his elbows casually. It's only now that Tony realizes how he's wearing just the green cotton shirt and black pants, not the usual Loki-ish attire he has recently.

"Your face is uneven." Loki comments, making Tony jolt back, playfully defensive.

"You know, they say romance is dead. I just don't know where they get it from."

"Your beard in over grown and you have not slept in... five days."

"I know."

"You are a human, you should be crippled with fatigue."

"Are you going to keep insulting me because I have s'more spanners here. You know what happened last time."

"I did enjoy your time in Asgard."

"Just leave." He groans, pressing a palm into the idiot's face.

"I'm bored." Loki's not giving up, and Tony just stares sceptically into his face.

"Well - You have a one night pass to do all that your title entails. As long as it's 100 miles away from sentient life including me."

"And while I am away, what will you be doing?"

"Pickling in loneliness."

"So then, nothing new?"

"Low blow, Loki. Low." He chuckles, ruffling his hair. At least he's not almost crying anymore. "I'm never lonely as such. I love my company as much as anyone else, I'm great. But I'll admit, this kinda sucks. I mean as nice as you are, I look at you and see mass-murdering psychopath. You're fun and all but you're also a bit of a time-bomb."

"I detonated. You need not fear."

"You detonated? Where?" Loki smiles, somewhat weakly.

"You need not fear."

"Oh, I always fear."

"Well then, if your friends means so much to you. I will take you to them."

"You're serious?"

"I like giving people what they want, but it will have to wait until everything is a little calmer."

"Why?"

"It is best not to sail in a storm."

"What the hell does that mean?" Loki shrugs. "But you'll take me?" Tony can't help but feel a little like an excited toddler.

"I know only too well how separation feels."

"Oh yeah, about that. How you holding up?"

"I am..." Loki tried to go off and pretend he's fine. Tony expects him to be angry. Tony expects him to be something, violently. But so far he hasn't been. That's more worrying than damn theorectical storms.

"Don't bullshit me, I haven't slept enough for bullshitting. You want to end up like nut-loose? Spill."

"I am... Hurt. I understand his actions."

"Why arent you copying."

"What would you have me do?"

"Why aren't you trying to take over the world? Why aren't you throwing a hissy fit? Why aren't you so damn annoyed that your blood boils?"

"I am. My blood _is_ boiling._ Oh, Tony, it's so horrible._ I am lost in the chasms of my despair." Tony holds up a screwdriver, holding it by the head and pointing the handle into Loki's face.

"God or not I will give you one hell of a memorable enema."

"I don't belive him." Well that makes Tony recoil.

"You don't- explain."

"I believe I should rephrase that." Loki ran a tongue along his bottom lip, which Tony wasn't looking at of course. "While I was away, I did some things. But then you."

"Am I your back up brother?"

"I do not think of you the way I think of Thor."

"God, if this is a love confession, please, save it for the priest, that stuff's sinful,"

"Seeing what I become with that anger I held," Loki's Adam's apple bobbed. "Has made me want to wait until I get answers." He laughed a chaste laugh. "I will be the last to trust myself wholly and unquestioningly."

"That doesn't sound very Loki-ish. I'm suspicious."

"He doesn't not seem like me. For which I am glad."

"You two_ are_ from different dimensions. Maybe you're actually different."

"That would be convenient for the worlds."

"Inconceivably." Tony fixed him with a stare. He knew there was more, he knew this was all just a really fine layer of bull crap, but Loki wasn't giving in. "Fine - You won't talk about it, but I suppose it's your... whatever. But remember, if you ever need me for a hand to hold or a hand to rip off a thousand times, I'm here."

As much as Loki may think he is, Tony's not an idiot. Just what was brewing under that laughey-Jokey exterior he really would have to find out. But for now, he stood, took Loki by the arm and walked in the direction of the empty kitchen. His work would have to make time for his stomach, which wasn't even hungry.

"You want anything to eat?" Tony asks as they walk into the pristine and unused _cuisine. _"There's a mouldy cabbage left in the fridge and I've got enough whiskey to feed the 5000."

"Nothing for me, thank you." Tony nods, but before long, he's rung the pizza place. He hopes the dude will leave without any major injury. Around Tony Stark doesn't seem to be the safest of places.

He did almost dial Pepper, but if he was going to see her in a bit, why make her come to him? He's not exactly mess free at present is he? The last thing he wants is her in danger too. He supposed Fury had a point there, but he was a bit of a douche about it, no matter the good intention.

Calling Fury? No. He wanted the Lokis to have their little death match away from The Avengers. Perhaps then he can keep up the facade of trying to seem innocent for a little longer.

The pizza arrives in seconds, and Tony leaves Loki inspecting a slightly off carrot to collect.

Mike, the delivery boy leaves with an autograph and tip in the region of three hundred. Mainly so he'll say that Iron Man was never here and still on the 'vacation' cover that Fury had set up while he was away being dead.

He pads back to the kitchen, sees how Loki's magically restored the orange long thing to it's former pre-decomposed state and was snapping it between his fingers, then sits on the bar stool, grappling a bottle of 64 en route.

While Tony's digging into his pepperoni and extra cheese chow, some other unwanted guests appear in the room. His Loki excuses himself from their conversation on Midgardian farming and wonders over to 'help' with the rather unsubtle dispute.

Loki and Loki and Loki continue bickering, and even though he is listening and seeing each individual mouths move, he still can't figure out who is saying what. It's making him see double, or triple.

"Hey, shut up." He finally snaps, mouth half full of grease and fat. They all turn on him, eyes daggers. This little partnership, if that's what it'll become, isn't working out so well and everyone in this room knows it. He pushes away the food that he now won't be able to finish, swallowing his last bite.

"We need names for each of you." Tony decides, still unsure which was which. "I'm thinking insane, not-as-much and just-odd. What do you think? This whole triple Loki is a bit too much to keep up with."

"I'm thinking your skin looks rather thin in this lighting." The death glares of three separate Loki's all at once was a little intimidating to say the least. He gave up with the nicknames, at least verbally.

"Well anyway, I'm going to go finish working on something, I'm growing mould. You guys should... Liaise?" He stood, and left. No one stopped him.

He should be more worried about the tripled problem, but if he gave himself time to worry, he'd end up doing something even more drastic than he is. Much to his surprise, once he's back in the lab and just about to add to that beautiful, promising looking code, Loki joins him. He doesn't look up, reasoning that if he isn't dead yet that this was his one.

"Go and cool the cat fight." He says, reasoning that someone not insane would be needed. Whatever the other two were doing, they were quarreling about it, and that was never going to end well.

"Why?"

"Because you're the peace keeper?"

"I have no peace to give out."

"And why's that?"

"I'm hardly a saint, Anthony." That's when he looks up. Ah. No, this could be interesting. Blue eyes. We have a blue eyes situation.

"Oh come on, you know just as well as me that deep down in that thick walled artery collection you call a heart, there's some metaphysical goodness that's just been smothered in green slime and cat fluff." 'not-so-much' looked at him coyly.

"Quite possibly."

"So what do you want me for? I'm hoping I'm not to become your latest fur coat? For starters I'm not that hairy. Well-"

"I came to thank you."

"You've been there, done that, and I'm glad I didn't buy the t-shirt."

And then suddenly he's surrounded. He sighs, and continues working. The fighting stops and now green eyes is eyeing blue suspiciously and it's all as glorious as it's ever going to get.

He's not sure how they'd arranged it, but when Tony looked up the next time from his creature creation every Loki was lounging on their own designated box and the decor was a bit more ruffled than before.

He wasn't sure what had happened around him while he'd zoned off into genius mode, but it looked like it'd been quite the party.

By Tony's next command, who had decided to spend the next few minutes in the real world, two out of three gods had left the room, and hopefully the building.

The semi-wanted Loki, from the corner, pondered on Tony's grease-spiked hair, musing over it silently, crossing his ankles as his shoulder pressed further into the back of the makeshift chair.

"You would look good with longer hair." Loki's eyes didn't move as his neck tilted.

"Please." Tony was almost offended. "But I'mma need you to keep yourselves under control, okay?" He re-read his work. Unable to see Loki, but sure he wasn't about to plunge a knife into his spine any time soon.

"I can usually control myself-" Loki ignored his previous problems with personality sharing for that statement. "But two, three? A god I may be, but so are they."

"So, what are their plans? What do I have to put up with? What part do I play?" He continued reading through his finished programming, looking for errors, of which he was sure there'd be none.

"From what little I can gather from their tainted ramblings, you are more the backstage role."

"That's not comforting."

"Then you are smarter than I give you credit for, Stark." Loki stood, approaching Tony from behind. "How is your personified coding going?"

"Good. Should be done in a few hours. I can't wait to hear a friendly voice around here." Loki accepted that in these conditions, no his voice was not 'friendly' and that previous remark was not a jab at him personally.

"And then you shall build-"

"My pal Iron Man. Yep." He stroked his oncoming beard as Loki placed a hand on his shoulder, peering over to read the quite frankly complicated text. He continued regardless of the intrusion of personal space. "Although I have to go get a few things, well most things. Pepper must've had a clean out." He might as well go now, his fingers were starting to cramp.

Then as if his words were invitation,_ which they certainly were not,_ the troublesome trio were back in play. Loki backed away from the contact.

"We will join you."

"Ha ha." Tony deadpanned, having no intention of allowing that at all. Loki, in public, with him. He wasn't suicidal, not socially at least.

"We are not letting you out of our sight,"

"Scared I'll rat?"

"Yes."

"I see-" Tony rubs his temples. "So any way, if you looney tunes are going to be coming, you need to be a little more Low key." He chuckled to himself, correcting a mistake in his work that he refused to remember the existence of.

"Any suggestions?"

"Hey!" He pointed a nearby Philips at the queasy one in the corner, allowing his eyes to turn away from the green and black screen. "Less of the snark - Be quiet." The aforementioned screwdriver sans hand was thrown to the floor with an angered flick of his wrist. "...or not" Tony then went back to work. "Well, I was thinking a facial reconstruction thing - ultimate recon. I mean I'm going to wandering round B&Q, you guys could hang around the door isle, feign interest in DIY." He coughed. "Generally stay out of trouble." Perhaps the last part was a little too much to ask for.

So anyway, they go shopping. People look at Tony Stark with humour. The cameras that take pictures are being disposed of by people he assumes to be Loki. One's a girl, and Tony thinks he likes that. One's an older man, perhaps mid-thirties and donned in a black trench coat, and the other, as Tony hasn't spotted him/her, is presumably off being a general and irritating nuisance. The woman strolls up behind him and takes the temporarily empty basket out of his hands.

"What happened to separate?" Tony hisses, trying not to laugh as the man 'bumps' into someone, knocking the camera onto the floor then accidentally tripping over it, breaking it beyond conceivable repair.

"It would look suspicious if you were alone."

"Yeah, but now I'm walking round with some strange woman. An attractive woman. People will talk."

"They seem to do little else."

"Which one are you anyway? There's one I'm hoping you are, but just to be sure."

"I haven't as of yet destroyed a city."

"Good-" Tony stops at the battery section. "What do you mean 'as of yet?'"

The shopping list was a fuck-tonne of everything basically.

Wires, circuit boards. A plank of wood for un-suit related reasons. He picked up bolts and nuts and screws which didn't even fit into the Iron Man design. He bought sets of tools which he already owned in their millions. He stocked up on oils and lubricants and cleaners and mops.

He bought stacks of clear plastics and white plastics and more. Rubber, acrylic, some light bulbs and just because Lady-Loki picked it up for more than a second, he even bought a chainsaw.

He'd find some use for it.

It probably wasn't smart to put lethal weapons in the hands of _them_, but they didn't need power tools to rip his head off, and that thought was a little terrifying, so he stopped thinking it.

Roll after roll of duct tape and scissors went into one of the mounting trollies, and even some plumbing pipes went in there somewhere.

He bought rope and string and wire cutters and was generally starting to resent the clean out.

Out of the three options available of storage cabinet, he chose the metallic red one.

He'd come back for the other two later.

Three dust masks, a few floor sheets and a wall painting stamp were his next victims.

The checkout clerk had fun with him.

With a boot and backseat full of mostly useless junk and bank which was $3,000 lighter, he started home again, kinda leaving the tax accountant and the invisible man to do their own thing. The metal cabinet sticking out the side of the R8 hadn't yet bothered anyone. Riding shotgun was the stunning brunette, who happened to have a pack of sand paper in her lap.

"All of this for one suit?"

The female version of Loki's voice wasn't all too dissimilar to his male one. Maybe a key or two higher, but it was just as soft as he reme- Damn.

"No..."

"Then why buy it?"

"I'm somewhat compulsive."

* * *

Tony had made his working space his again, and now instead of standing betwixt boxes he now stood between filled boxes, some of which over filled and bulging. He'd let Loki keep the chainsaw, he seemed intrigued.

Loki was now back in his original form, and Tony didn't know whether to be pleased or disappointed.

Tony sat down on the floor next to the box which held the industrial strength epoxy glue he may have picked up, among many other miscellaneous things. Putting down the tool intended for tree trimming, Loki joined him, sitting the other side of the solvent box.

"Do not cut your hair." Loki moaned, taking an item out of it meaning Tony had to snatch it back.

"Look, I do not need fashion advice from you."

"In one of our many previous cultures, short hair was a sign of servitude. The longer the hair..."

"If you think I'm growing it out and plaiting it, I'm not. So shut up, Dorothy and can you to get me a beer?" Loki placed a beer down onto the floor without even moving. Cool beads of condensation travelled down the brown bottle, pooling round the rim in a taunting way, if beer bottles can be taunting. Tony took it, relieved it of its cap with his hand and drank. Never in his life would he have even dreamed to call Stella dull and bitter, but with taste buds still so used to sweet, rich wines, this seemed exactly so. He drank it anyway, out of some misplaced idea of Home and familiarity.

Loki stayed silent and watched Tony swallow, taking in and storing the lines of Tony's neck and chest that his newly changed shirt graciously exposed. He stared at the reactor for a few seconds too, mouth turning down.

Apparently though, when Tony put down the half empty bottle and looked at the plastic, newly placed 'Dora the Explorer' clock on the wall, it was dawn, but he didn't believe that for a second, although it was.

"Finish your Jarvis, Stark, and meet me upstairs when you are done."

"Why-" He was then alone, and he smiled, heaving himself up and bringing both he and the brown beer to the desk.

The last hundred pages or so of code were done by half past eleven. AM.

"Good Morning, Sir." Was around the time that Tony started singing 'The Lion King.'

"Oh- Jarvis!"

"Miss me, sir?"

"Oh- Just keep talking." And so Jarvis whittles on about the status of his software, and generally just compliments Sir on his performance and thanks him from the bottom of his diodes for the extra features. To name a few: Outer detection software, chip tracking and something a little special Tony thought he might need a little later.

Its half past seven in the evening before Tony walks up the stairs and greets Loki with a cheek-splitting grin. He half jumps down onto the couch next to the green-eyed statue, who's reading some olde-time book, and throws his leg over the arm. His head comes to rest under the book Loki's holding up for him, and looks into Loki studious eyes.

"Well," Tony dug his head deeper into the thigh. "You're comfier than expected." Of course Loki was silent, the book lowered so it was only inches from his face. Loki hadn't stopped reading. It wasn't a particularly big book, only about an inch of pages but Loki seemed to be turning the pages quite slowly, in fact, while Tony watched and rambled with no response, he hadn't turned a page in near ten minutes. The only time he got a reaction out of him was when he started whistling. The book was brought down on his forehead harder than was probably required. Loki snickered - Bastard. "You know that's abuse?" He cursed, rubbing his head "I could sue." Still the god kept his silence. "Talk to meee..." He tried again, drawling out his words like a child once the red patch had faded slightly between his eyes. Still silence. "Come on, don't leave me hanging."

"I was rather enjoying my silence." Loki was still 'reading', Tony's eyes watching him upside down.

"Well, we can't all be happy." He suddenly seemed all too happy to put the book down with that slanted grin on his face. Having Loki here really wasn't doing great things for his blood pressure.

"What would we discuss?"

"The fact that you've got a little menage a trois going on?"

"Plus one."

"Ooo..." He drawled, "I'm honoured."

"But it is not an easy truce."

"You don't like 'em?" Tony picked absently at the crust on his shirt.

"They are not pleasant to converse with - I don't think they like _me._"

"That's self-loathing on a whole new scale."

"So it seems."

"You know, you're really not that bad."

"No?"

"No." And then Tony, like the awkward, slightly insulting man he has always been, inadvertently yawns. "What do you think of Loke?" Tony shuffles, getting comfortable. "You know, for a nickname?"

"You want to know what I think?" Loki's voice lowers, and so do Tony's thoughts. That wasn't a yelp - no. Just confirmation that the glint in Loki's eyes was somewhat compelling. "I think-" Loki ran a hand through Tony's shaggy hair softly, tugging a little at the ends, tilting his head down, drawing their faces closer together, Tony's still rested on his thigh. "That we..." He smirks, Tony's legs hitching up, his fingers starting to fidget. "Should get some sleep, Stark."

And with a sneaked in transfer of magical sedative, Tony sleeps like a reluctant log.

For a while, that is.


End file.
